'Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic' explores the impact of different black cultures from around the Atlantic on art from the early twentieth-century to today. The exhibition takes its inspiration from Paul Gilroy's influential book 'The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness' 1993. It features over 140 works by more than 60 artists. Gilroy used the term 'The Black Atlantic' to describe the transmission of black cultures around the Atlantic, and the instances of cultural hybridity, that occurred as a result of transatlantic slavery and its legacy. 'Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic' reflects Gilroy's idea of the Atlantic Ocean as a 'continent in negative', offering a network connecting Africa, North and South America, the Caribbean and Europe. It traces both real and imagined routes taken across the Atlantic, and highlights artistic links and dialogues from the early twentieth-century to today. The exhibition is divided into seven chronological sections. Charting new forms of art arising from black culture and the work of black artists and intellectuals, it opens up an alternative, transatlantic reading of modernism and contemporary culture.
In this comprehensive book, published to coincide with a groundbreaking Tate exhibition, leading scholars examine how “the Black Atlantic,” a key concept in post-colonial studies coined by British academic Paul Gilroy in 1993, applies to art, and in doing so confirms the centrality of artists of African descent to the formation of modernity. Topics explored include the early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde; the Harlem Renaissance; the cultural links between Africa and Brazil; contemporary and “post-black” art; and the way Paul Gilroy’s original concept of the Black Atlantic remains relevant to current discussions of migration and exploitation. The book includes works by leading artists from throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.
