Collateral Event of the 58th Venice Biennale
May 11–November 24, 2019
AFRICOBRA: Nation Time is an official Collateral Event of Venice Biennale 2019 (May 11–November 24, 2019), in Venice, Italy.
AFRICOBRA: Nation Time is presented by bardoLA, originated and supported by the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, and curated by Jeffreen M. Hayes, Ph.D. The exhibition is sponsored by Kavi Gupta Gallery and made possible with the generous support from the City of North Miami, Florida, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The exhibition is also supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art as part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy. Special thanks to the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, Shirley and William Lehman. The forthcoming catalogue is made possible, in part, by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.
AFRICOBRA was founded in Chicago in 1968 by a collective of Black artists, whose interest in Transnational Black Aesthetics led them to create one of the most distinctive visual voices in 20th century American art. The key characteristics to what we now consider the classic AFRICOBRA look—vibrant, “cool-ade” colors, bold text, shine and positive images of Black people—were essential to everyday life in the community from which this movement emerged. It is a movement with roots in the soil, streets, classrooms, studios, and living rooms of the South Side of Chicago—yet its influence has extended around the world.
The five AFRICOBRA founders—Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Gerald Williams—understood the potential power visual art has to communicate deep meaning on multiple layers. They had the sophistication to mobilize the organic elements of their everyday visual environment into something capable of affecting the hearts, minds, and spirits of contemporary people. Their collective impact, in addition to Napoleon Jones-Henderson and Nelson Stevens both of whom joined the group in 1969 on the visual arts scene helped establish the visual voice of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Their further impact—as artists, educators, and community leaders—has brought the members of AFRICOBRA to the forefront of contemporary conversations about the history, legacy, and future of Black Art in America and the world.
AFRICOBRA: Nation Time is the next chapter of AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People, which premiered at MOCA North Miami during Art Basel Miami 2018. AFRICOBRA: Nation Time will focus entirely on the historic aspects of this vital, Chicago-born Black Arts collective. More than 40 works will be on view by Jeff Donaldson, Gerald Williams, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, and Nelson Stevens. Historic documentation, archival photographs and other ephemera will be showcased throughout the exhibition offering a unique and comprehensive narrative of AFRICOBRA’s birth and evolution in Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s and its reverberating effect on the art scenes of Washington, DC, New York City, and Lagos, Nigeria.
This groundbreaking exhibition will be mounted within the historic, picturesque Venetian Gothic palazzo of Ca’ Faccanon, offering more than 5,000 square feet of exhibition space. Its perfectly central location is only meters away from the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s square.
AFRICOBRA: Nation Time at Biennale Arte 2019 is the first time the work of this vital, definitive, and historic Black Arts collective has been given the opportunity to be celebrated by global audiences on this scale. AFRICOBRA: Nation Time is an exhibition of historic importance for the Black Arts Movement in the United States and all international audiences who are curious to discover more about the ways in which the aesthetic of African American artists relates to politics, culture and identity. Capturing the sentiment of their time with a visual language of vivid colors, rhythm, compositional arrangement and shine, the artists reflect how a marginalized group found a way to empower themselves in a society that consistently denied them their power.
For more information about AFRICOBRA: Nation Time, please contact Abbie Lipton / Durée & Company, Inc., T 954-723-9350, abbie [at] dureeandcompany.com or Elizabeta Betinski / bardoLA, T 310-902-3027, hello [at] bardola.org.
