exhibition statement.
joyful noise. is an online exhibition that unfolds as a quiet scroll. Across ten works, five artists of the African diaspora lean into relation, rhythm, and refusal. Here, Blackness is not a wound to be mapped but a cosmos to be moved within.
The exhibition opens with the rumble of abstraction that summon ancestral frequencies, cosmic weather, and ritual mark-making. Their gestures are neither explanatory nor distant. Instead, they vibrate. And perhaps listen.
As you walk, you feel the storm change. You begin to recognize beauty inside of unknowing. As one line in the exhibition reads, “unknown doesn’t mean fear. da unknown is new, like morning.”
Through this new morning, Sonia Boyce offers a gesture of care and intimacy. She reminds us that Black art must serve beauty, and that beauty itself is resistance. Aaron Douglas meets Wilfredo Lam, and memory becomes music. Yinka Shonibare brings us to a point of balance, play, and critique, where joy is both precarious and possible.
The works are scaled to reflect their physical size, an intentional gesture toward presence. The scroll becomes a dance. joyful noise. a hum. a murmur. It testifies through form, color, rhythm, and refusal. Perhaps there’s more than one way to be seen.
The exhibition draws its shape from five lines, positioned truths, from the Melanie Herzog’ The Black Atlantic class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
relation and opacity are the foundations of diasporic identity.
black art must serve beauty.
black artists must build a collective.
black memory must be reimagined through art.
“cool” is a diasporic aesthetic and ethical stance.
curator note
I grew up thinking the word “Black” only ever pointed to pain. This show is part of me unlearning that. Through these works, and through the theory we studied, I’ve begun to understand that opacity is a right and that I don’t have to make myself readable to be real.
joyful noise. is a reminder that we are dream carrying memories forward.
In the end, I hope this show feels like what the last poem says:
“you’ll see that there’s beauty in this journey…
and see
there’s joy in this journey.”
curator
cenìnye harris
artists
aubrey williams.
sonia boyce.
wilfredo lam.
aaron douglas.
yinka shonibar
references
Bernier, C.-M. (2020). Inside the invisible: Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid. In C.-M. Bernier et al. (Eds.), Inside the invisible: Memorialising slavery and freedom in the life and works of Lubaina Himid (pp. 10–29). Liverpool University Press.
Donaldson, J. (1970). 10 in search of a nation: Black art and the search for a Black aesthetic. Studio Museum in Harlem.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1926). Criteria of Negro art. The Crisis, 32(6), 290–297.
Glissant, É. (1997). Poetics of relation (B. Wing, Trans.). University of Michigan Press.
Thompson, R. F. (1973). An aesthetic of the cool: West African dance. African Arts, 7(1), 78–80+96.
Noel, S. A. (2015). Envisioning new worlds: Wifredo Lam and Aaron Douglas. Small Axe, 19(2), 144–159.
Dalal-Clayton, A. (2018). Sonia Boyce: Beyond blackness. British Art Studies, 10. https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-10/dalalclayton
Mercer, K. (2006). Cosmopolitan contact zones. Kobena Mercer: Discrepant Abstraction (pp. 7–25). MIT Press.
Wilson, F. (1992). Mining the museum. Baltimore Historical Society Journal, 85(1), 53–71.
Shirey, H. (2013). Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle: Postcolonial public art and national identity in contemporary London. African Arts, 46(2), 70–81.
oil on canvas, 76.2 × 101.5 cm
oil on canvas, 151.8 × 284.5 cm
oil on canvas, 83.5 × 133.8 cm
acrylic on canvas, 106.5 × 120.4 cm
acrylic on canvas, 137 × 182.5 cm
oil on canvas, 99.5 × 130 cm
watercolour, pastel, and crayon on paper, 123.8 × 183 cm
oil on linen canvas, 61 × 70 cm
oil and charcoal on canvas, 212.1 × 196.2 cm
fibreglass mannequin, dutch wax printed cotton textile, books, globe, leather, and steel baseplate, 156 × 94 × 120 cm
in order of appearance
aubrey williams – tribal mark ii, 1961
wilfredo lam – rumblings of the earth, 1950
aubrey williams – death and the conquistador, 1959
aubrey williams – cosmic storm, 1977
aubrey williams – bonampak (number 17), 1967
aubrey williams – el dorado, 1960
sonia boyce – missionary position ii, 1985
aaron douglas – the street urchin, circa 1938
wilfredo lam – cardinal harps (arpas cardinales), 1948–1957
yinka shonibare – boy balancing knowledge, 2015
aubrey williams – tribal mark ii, 1961
wilfredo lam – rumblings of the earth, 1950
aubrey williams – death and the conquistador, 1959
aubrey williams – cosmic storm, 1977
aubrey williams – bonampak (number 17), 1967
aubrey williams – el dorado, 1960
sonia boyce – missionary position ii, 1985
aaron douglas – the street urchin, circa 1938
wilfredo lam – cardinal harps (arpas cardinales), 1948–1957
yinka shonibare – boy balancing knowledge, 2015