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"AfriCOBRA: Message to the People" at MOCA by Lili Tisseyre #The highly symbolic aesthetics of Black Art was discovered during the "Soul of a Nation" exhibition at the Tate Modern in September 2017 and again this summer at the Brooklyn Museum. On the occasion of the 2018 edition of Miami Art Basel, the Museum of Contemporary Art North in Miami celebrates AfriCOBRA's 50th anniversary for "African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists" and presents "AfriCOBRA, Message to the People", a "revolutionary" exhibition by the collective created in 1968 in Chicago. This legendary group of black artists defined, from its foundation, the immediately identifiable modern and visual aesthetics of what would be called the Black Arts Movement in the mid 1960s and 1970s. AfriCOBRA was born out of a first collective, the OBAC, which acquired national fame in 1967 with the creation of a monumental fresco, the Wall of Respect, in the Bronzeville district of Chicago. AfriCOBRA claims to be the tool for using art to meet the social and cultural challenges affecting the African-American community. This huge mural "depicts the 'Black Heroes' as positive role models for identity, community formation and revolutionary action. AfriCOBRA frees itself from codes and uses painting, printmaking, textile design, clothing design, photography and sculpture. The group's artists couple them with abstract motifs to evoke African artistic traditions and with visual elements of luminous, luminous "Kool-Aid" colours. Thus, works created from portraits, found everyday objects, letters and pictures emerge. Thus created, these raw, emotional and festive images of black figures defined the social, economic and political conditions of the black people. In 1969, the group disseminated its ideas by publishing a manifesto "Ten in Search of a Nation", which set out the goals they hoped to achieve, defining the images that retrace the past, tell the present and herald the future. By using its black identity, style, attitude and worldview, AfriCOBRA promotes solidarity and self-confidence of the African Diaspora: a true revolution of mind, body and soul of which AfriCOBRA is the cradle. This exhibition, which can be described as historical, explores both the individual careers of the founders, Jeff Donaldson, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Gerald Williams, and those of artists who exhibited with them between 1968-1973, and explores how AfriCOBRA's philosophy manifests itself as a group in their artistic endeavours. AfriCOBRA, Message to the People Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) Until April 7, 2019 770 NE 125th Street, 33161 North Miami, Florida 06 Dec 2018 #Afrique #Black Art #Miami Art Basel #Peinture
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