Entering Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, we imagined the house as one that would have existed in Seneca Village, the current site of Central Park and the MET Museum itself. The room takes you on a trip through time, mixing the past with the present. For Trinity, the house invoked the idea of “In-House” discussions, conversations that should happen only within the Black community. One of the things that caught the eye of our group was the film “Out/Side of Time” by Jenn Nkiru. For us, Afrofuturism means having your own space, imagining a world outside of the one we have now to escape racism. Another image in the exhibit, “Summer Azure” by the artist Tourmaline, shows a black woman in a spacesuit lifting off the earth.

In the Fictions of Emancipation exhibit we were struck by the sculptures of black people shown in classical styles. These depictions help us to imagine what could have been in a world without slavery, or if emancipation had been achieved earlier. Also in the exhibit, Christopher and G’Nelle both took photos of the Antislavery ornaments.

 

Christopher Edwards, G’Nelle Clark, Trinity Hollis