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Existence as Resistance: The Magic in Blackness

Existence as Resistance: The Magic in Blackness is a Women’s Center curated exhibition of NC State students, staff, and faculty creatives who have taken an Afrofuturist lens to create radical Black futures for themselves and viewers.

This exhibit is curated by the NC State Women’s Center and hosted in the African American Cultural Center Art Gallery on the second floor of Witherspoon Student Center. Photography is the work of Jacqueline Perry with Afrofuturistic design led by Joanna Ali and created by individual student, staff, and faculty artists at NC State University. Curated by Angela Gay.


Jay Encarnacion-Rivera
Antoinette Norton
Kory Saunders
Tia Canada
Tre Ricanek
Amari Wilson
Kyra Barrier
Chaniqua Simpson
Toni Thorpe
Shantoneeka Zorn
Khadija Parker
Rasheedah Fletcher
Angela Gay
Asia King
Miyah Wilson
Christopher Moore
Tonya Hines
John Pierre Craig
Jordan Bullock
Elikem Dodor
Sonya Lassiter
Jameco McKenzie
Juniper Nie
Elyse Smith
Brittany Wake
Josephine Ocran
Jerrica Jones
Aaliyah Whitfield
Jonathan McCorey
Nashia Whittenburg
Bri Hart
Joanna Ali

If you missed the opening reception, don’t worry. Put on your headphones, listen to this exhibit inspired playlist and take a walk around the gallery. Additionally, check out the Black History & Futures video from the exhibit, featuring a few familiar faces from NC State.

 

What is Afrofuturism?

The re-imagining, through a Black lens and steeped in ancient African traditions and black identity, the future. It is the envisioning Black futures that stem from Afrodiasporic experiences and the creation of new future realities. Alondra Nelson explained Afrofuturism as a way of looking at the subject position of black people which covers themes of alienation and aspirations for a utopic future. While afrofuturist thinking had been conceived of for centuries prior, Afrofuturism as a term was coined by the author, Mark Dery in the essay “Black to the Future.” which looks at speculative fiction within the African diaspora. In this essay, Dery posed questions that laid the foundation for the philosophy of Afrofuturism, asking, “Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures? Furthermore, isn’t the unreal estate of the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, streamliners, and set designers ― white to a man ― who have engineered our collective fantasies?

Today, by virtue of the radical Black imagination, we recognize and celebrate the unapologetic existence of Blackness in its multiple and pluralistic forms rooted in the uniqueness and innovation of black culture.

Partners
The Women’s Center thanks the GLBT Center and the African American Cultural Center for being a partner for this exhibition and related programs.