Throughout the year, Teen Curators explored the concepts of AfroSurrealism and AfroFuturism. Primary and archival research from the Schomburg Center’s five divisions were central to understanding the core concepts. Artists/Curators read unpublished poems by Amiri Baraka, examined Henry’s Dumas surrealist frame of blackness, which was tight and centered and poured through cosmic expression of The Wisdom of Sun Ra papers. We also traveled to the Guggenheim to take a fresh look at the exhibition, Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story by the institution’s first Black curator, Chaderia LaBouvier. We read the beginning and end of the novel, Beloved on the day that its author, the legendary Toni Morrison, was memorialized, enhancing her spirit as well as our viewing of the book’s 1997 film adaption. We read through The 1619 Project and used it’s interactive features to bridge the connections of the ever-present legacies of enslavement. Then, as we ventured into the Digital Realm, the connections between the foundations of AfroFuturism and AfroSurrealism got stronger as we collaborated with The Black School to work on projects signifying the cultivation of Black space and giving reverence to our ancestors through ritual and recipes. 

 

Represented below is a slideshow of audio/visual references and processfolio notes in response to the curriculum as well as to the relationship with the black imagination, detailing image creation and exhibition design.