W. E. B. Du Bois: Charting Black Lives
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
W. E. B. Du Bois: Charting Black Lives 8 November 2019 – 1 March 2020 Pioneering infographics from turn-of-the-century America Innovative data visualisations that challenged institutional racism Revered by everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Beyoncé, W. E. B. Du Bois stands as one of the most important and influential African American activists and intellectuals of the 20th century. As co-founder of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and author of the seminal book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois is celebrated for his profound and prolific writings. But alongside his famous essays, Du Bois produced an astounding – yet little-known – body of infographics to challenge pseudo-scientific racism, making visual arguments every bit as powerful as his textual ones. W. E. B. Du Bois: Charting Black Lives will open at House of Illustration on 8 November. For the first time in the UK, it will display the complete set of 63 graphics shown at the 1900 Paris Exposition, produced by Du Bois and a team of African American students from his sociology laboratory at Atlanta University. These visually innovative graphs, charts and maps formed a radical new approach to refuting racism, using strikingly presented facts and statistics to counter contemporary white supremacy. In stark contrast to other exhibitors at the Paris Exposition that viewed black people as colonial commodities, Du Bois had one goal: to prove, to an international audience, the essential equality of African American people. By presenting his own research on the achievements of African Americans in the few short years since Emancipation, Du Bois demonstrated that black culture had flourished even within the extreme constraints of violently enforced racial segregation across the Southern states. Alongside reproductions of Du Bois’s graphics, the exhibition will present original artwork by Mona Chalabi, Data Editor at The Guardian, repurposing his distinctively clean lines, arresting shapes and bold primary colours for the 21st century. Chalabi’s work demonstrates the enduring relevance of Du Bois’s data visualisation methods and the racial inequalities he fought against. W. E. B. Du Bois: Charting Black Lives is co-curated by Paul Goodwin, Professor at the University of the Arts London, a curator, scholar and specialist in black urbanism. Exhibition designer Violetta Boxill will reference Du Bois’s original exhibition design based on photographs from 1900, now in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Exhibition co-curator Katie McCurrach of House of Illustration says: “W. E. B. Du Bois’ data visualisations confronted 1900 audiences with undeniable evidence that black lives matter. We’re delighted to be presenting this often overlooked body of work from a century ago alongside artwork Mona Chalabi is producing today – encouraging this crucial conversation to continue.” Exhibition co-curator Prof Paul Goodwin of the University of the Arts, London, says: “I’m delighted to co-curate the first comprehensive showing in the UK of these seminal data visualisation charts that helped to put Black lives at the centre of social debates while also helping to pioneer the emerging arts of data visualisation. This exhibition will enable audiences in the UK to gain a greater understanding of the incredible range of W.E.B. Dubois’s scholarship and activism and inspire a new generation of scholar-activists across many fields of social and political intervention.” NOTES TO EDITORS W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was a Massachusetts-born sociologist, historian, author, editor, activist, Pan-African theorist and data designer and one of the most important black protest leaders in the first half of the 20th century. He published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, co-founded the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 1909 and edited its magazine, The Crisis, from 1910 to 1924. He died in Accra, Ghana. Mona Chalabi is a New York-based journalist and producer and Data Editor at The Guardian US. She has written for New York Magazine, produced radio for NPR and TV programmes for Netflix, the BBC, National Geographic, Channel 4 and Vice and exhibited work at the Design Museum in London. Professor Paul Goodwin is a London-based curator, urban theorist and interdisciplinary researcher. His curatorial, research and writing projects extend across the interdisciplinary fields of contemporary art, urbanism, and exhibition making with a particular focus on African diaspora art and visual cultures. Between 2006 and 2012 he led the research project Re-Visioning Black Urbanism at Goldsmiths University of London and was also a curator at Tate Britain where he directed the pioneering Cross Cultural Programme exploring issues of migration, race and globalisation in contemporary British art. He is currently Director of the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) at University of the Arts London where he holds the UAL Chair in Contemporary Art and Urbanism. 1900 Paris Exposition was a world’s fair held in Paris from 14 April to 12 November 1900 to celebrate the achievements of the past century and anticipate those of the next. It was visited by almost 50 million people. House of Illustration is the UK’s only public gallery dedicated to illustration and graphic arts. Founded by Sir Quentin Blake in 2014, its exhibition programme explores illustration in all its forms, from animation to graphic novels, children’s books to political cartoons . A registered charity, House of Illustration runs the UK’s only illustration residency programme, delivers a vibrant programme of events and has a pioneering learning programme for all ages delivered by professional illustrators. Black Lives 1900: W. E. B. Du Bois at the Paris Exposition, edited by Julian Rothenstein, will be published by Redstone Press to coincide with the exhibition opening. FOR MORE INFORMATION, IMAGES & INTERVIEWS Please contact Tracy Jones at Brera PR: 01702216658 / 07887514984 / [email protected]. Download high-resolution press images from this Dropbox. Credits are saved in the file names. LISTINGS INFORMATION W. E. B Du Bois: Charting Black Lives 8 November 2019 – 1 March 2020 House of Illustration, 2 Granary Square, King’s Cross, London N1C 4BH 020 3696 2020, www.houseofillustration.org.uk, facebook.com/houseofillustration, @illustrationHQ Open Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5.30pm, Sunday 11am-5.30pm. Closed Monday. One ticket gives admission to all three galleries (£8.80). Exhibitions currently on: Designed in Cuba: Cold War Graphics (opens 27 September) Marie Neurath: Picturing Science (until 3 November) Quentin Blake: From the Studio (permanent) IMAGE CREDITS City and Rural Population, 1890 © W. E. B. Du Bois, courtesy of the Library of Congress Distribution of Negroes in the United States © W. E. B. Du Bois, courtesy of the Library of Congress Occupations of Negroes and Whites in Georgia © W. E. B. Du Bois, courtesy of the Library of Congress .