RECONSTRUCTIONS: ARCHITECTURE AND BLACKNESS IN AMERICA – NEW EXHIBITION AT MoMA
How does race structure America’s cities? MoMA’s first exhibition to explore the relationship between architecture and the spaces of African American and African diaspora communities, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America presents 10 newly commissioned works by architects, designers, and artists that explore ways in which histories can be made visible and equity can be built.
Centuries of disenfranchisement and race-based violence have led to a built environment that is not only compromised but also, as the critic Ta-Nehisi Coates contends, “argues against the truth of who you are.” These injustices are embedded in nearly every aspect of America’s design—an inheritance of segregated neighborhoods, compromised infrastructures, environmental toxins, and unequal access to financial and educational institutions.
Each project in the exhibition proposes an intervention in one of 10 cities: from the front porches of Miami and the bayous of New Orleans to the freeways of Oakland and Syracuse. Reconstructions examines the intersections of anti-Black racism and Blackness within urban spaces as sites of resistance and refusal, attempting to repair what it means to be American.
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Photo of Alette Hernandez and her mother outside their former home in Miami, Florida. Their neighborhood would flood regularly after storms and heavy rains. c. 2001
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Olalekan Jeyifous. Plant Seeds Grwo Blessings, 2020. Photomontage, framed renderings printed on Luster 260 GSM, 40x30 inches. Courtesy of the artista.
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Sekou Cooke. We Outchea. 2020
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Felecia Davis. Drawing 2. 2020
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At the Time of the Louisville Flood, 1937. Margaret Bourke-White.
Reconstructions features works by Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Mario Gooden, Walter Hood, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. Mitch McEwen, and Amanda Williams, as well as new photographs by artist David Hartt.
