by Shaienne Knox
Mitch McConnell, U.S. Senator
After witnessing last month’s Freudian slip on the part of “top senate republican” Mitch McConnell, I was, yet again, disappointed in my country. However, time and time again, I am never surprised by the blatant disregard for black people as American citizens. After all, the very start of our presence here was based solely in the capitalization of our bodies for labor. After gaining freedom, my people simply decreased in value. I was joking with my mother following this comment, and I mentioned that since African Americans aren’t Americans, we should just start African America. But what is African America?
“Rekindling Memory” described
- thought-provoking
- ethereal
- group artist
- historically based
- spiritual
- ancestral
- antebellum
- vintage
- raw
- narrative
- personal
- introspective
- layered
Ideal Locations
Potential Exhibit Features
- Natural lighting (where possible)
- Raw materials for walls and backgrounds (wood, stone, metal, sand, mud)
- several films and moving art pieces
- cultural music and nature sounds from the American South played
- Separated spaces for each topic that are still as open and spread out as possible
- an audio guide similar to that of the Whitney Plantation with oral historical retellings
- no formal entrance or exit, allowing visitors to experience the exhibit in their own way
- artifacts displayed simillarly to Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum
- performances of lost or recovered cultural songs as events
- Map handout “tracing” the highlights of the evolution of African American culture
How do I present this?
When I picture this exhibit, it is presented as a celebration. It is a declaration of cultural independence. African Americans have created such a vibrant culture as a direct result of suffering, and this exhibit is a statement meant to claim that culture as its own. It is also presented from a deeply personal place. I recently learned that my (alive and well) great grandmother was forced to leave school in order to work with her family as a sharecropper in Jackson, Mississippi. This fact has been stirring inside me since, and I was inspired mostly by this.
What would make up “African America” and what has been lost in the process of forging it? This exhibit aligns with my ideals that art should be created without the influence of the white gaze, thus birthing African America.
Curatorial Practicum 
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