The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened a new exhibit displaying and honoring Black people around the globe. The exhibit is called “Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics” and was born to emphasize the aesthetic impact of Black artists’ work. The oppression Black people endure is inconceivable.
Diaspora is a word associated with displacement, and dating back to the time of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Black people were traded throughout the world for hundreds of years. This has led to them having to create ways of survival through their creativity while being forced to reinvent their heritage in their new foreign land.
The exhibit displays evocative accounts of Black experiences throughout time in different parts of the world. Artists express their being through their aesthetic decisions. Black artists’ work constitutes a living history, tracing their insights about what it is like to be alive.
“Often art historians focus on Black artist biographies or write evocative accounts of their experiences of oppression before critically examining their innovations or use of materials,” Dhyandra Lawson, the exhibit curator, said about the process of creating the exhibition. “Diaspora, in its general definition as a displacement from origins, excludes all the creativity the term entails. Imagining Black diasporas highlights Black artists’ aesthetic decisions to amplify their insights.”
The exhibition embraces entanglement. Through four themes, the project uncovers aesthetic connections among the work of fifty-nine artists worldwide. Discrete expressions butt up against each other. In the context of this exploration, the Black Diaspora is a dynamic concept constructed imaginatively.
“With more than half of the artworks on view recently acquired for LACMA’s collection, “Imagining Black Diasporas” is an extension of the museum’s commitment to Black artists working everywhere and points to the future of even more global collections of contemporary art at LACMA,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO.
The exhibit is split into four themes: Speech and Silence, Movement and Transformation, Imagination, and Representation. These themes show the dehumanization of Black people at the hands of European conquest throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Some artists featured are Widline Cadet, Frida Orupabo, Sandra Brewster, Ibrahim Mahama, and many more. The exhibit is located on the second floor of LACMA at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. It is free to the public. The exhibit is on display through Aug. 3, 2025.
