Review relating to an exhibition, 2014
Published by: Art in America
Year published: 2014
Number of pages: 2

Two-page review of The Shadows Took Shape - an exhibition held at Studio Museum in Harlem, 14 November  - 9 March 2014. The review was written by Miriam Atkin and appeared in the March 2014 issue of Art in America, on pages 145-146. From the review: “The Shadows Took Shape,” which borrows its title from a poem by the renowned jazz musician Sun Ra, is an exhibition about channeling technological visions not toward commodity culture - the standard beneficiary of scientific ingenuity - but toward a release from present constraints into a broadly self-determined future. Studio Museum assistant curator Naima J. Keith and independent curator Zoe Whitley have collected 60 works by 29 international artists around the concept of “Afrofuturism,” a term coined in 1994 by theorist Mark Dery to indicate an aesthetic mode that intermngles pan-African concerns with science fiction and fantasy imagery. Nodding to the reigning influence of Sun Ra’s 1972 mytho-satirical sci-fi film, Space is the Place, the show gives much attention to the moving image. as a whole, the film and video program, including works by [John] Akomfrah, Wanuri Kahui, Wangechi Mutu, the Otolith Group and Larissa Sansour being screeened sequentially in the downstairs gallery, provides a useful, essayistic background to the show’s theme.”

The review was illustrated by a still from John Akomfrah’s The Last Angel of History, 1996, the work with which Atkin began her review.