In the Soloviev Foundation exhibition “Between Distance and Desire: African Diasporic Perspectives,” curator Tumelo Mosaka asks us to reconsider these structures as more than as a set of artifacts defining ancient civilizations, so that we might know the vastness of African art in the current social, global, and political context, according to a story about the exhibit published in The Brooklyn Rail.
The exhibit includes eight contemporary artists juxtaposed alongside works in the foundation’s collection, encouraging viewers to create new possibilities for interpretation, or as the exhibition essay states, treat Africa as “a subject rather than an object of modernity,” according to the story’s author Lee Ann Norman. “The works in the show are all inspired by African art forms, particularly masks, and span portraiture, monumental sculpture, performance, and assemblage. An entire wall is devoted to the display of masks made across cultures on the continent.”
The show opened in the spring and runs through Dec. 31.
Mosaka is director and curator of the Mellon Arts Project, a collaboration with Prof. Kellie Jones who teaches in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University. He has worked within and outside museums exploring global transnational artistic practices, especially from Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. He is also the resident curator for the Opa-locka Community Development Corporation in Miami.
