DIS PLACE (MOCADA)

New York, NY
Oct 2015 – Jan 2016

Displacement, or a state of being rooted in uprootedness, is a consequence of colonial conquest in Africa and the Americas that have come to frame dominant perceptions of diasporic identity and nationhood.

DIS PLACE, curated by Allison Davis & Ali Rosa-Salas, maps the somatic, psychological, and infrastructural violence of displacement in the contemporary African Diaspora from the perspectives of those living in its throes. Through material and contextual inquiries into objects ranging from firearms to fruit, the collection of works by Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Kudzanai Chiurai, Mohau Modisakeng, Valerie Piraino, Sable Elyse Smith, and Ralph Ziman render visible the power relations produced by and through displacement, and the innovative strategies that transform even its most foreboding effects into dynamic and grounding cultural formations.

ABOUT MoCADA

Founded in 1999 by Laurie Angela Cumbo in a building owned by the Bridge Street AME Church in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community of Brooklyn, New York, the concept of MoCADA grew from Ms. Cumbo’s graduate thesis at New York University, which focused on the feasibility of an African diaspora museum contributing to the revitalization of central Brooklyn economically, socially, politically, and aesthetically.

Twenty years later, MoCADA has grown through three programmatic arms: Exhibitions, Education, and Community.

RETURN HOME

RETURN TO EXHIBITIONS