A new exhibition, From the Deep: In the Wake of Drexciya, is now open in Washington, D.C.
The immersive installation by New Jersey-born artist Ayana V. Jackson is exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.
Known for their pioneering influence on the Afrofuturist movement, Drexciya’s mythological underwater kingdom is the inspiration behind Jackson’s “speculative world,” and her first creative venture working with video and animation.
Some People Have Spiritual Eyes I
The work is described by the museum’s senior curator, Karen E. Milbourne, as “an immersive, feminist, and sacred aquatopia where African water spirits from Senegal to South Africa both midwife and protect the Drexciyans”.In the early 1990s, Drexciya, a Detroit-based techno duo made up of James Stinson and Gerald Donald, imagined an underwater kingdom populated by the children of pregnant women who had been thrown overboard or jumped voluntarily into the ocean during the transatlantic slave trade.
Jackson asks that we reckon with the brutal history that cast these beings to the sea while simultaneously envisioning a world of powerful, resilient women. By using her own body to convey her message, Jackson actively engages in what it might have meant to be among the estimated two million captives who never made it to shore. What do you imagine the Drexciyans see looking back at us?
Check out the introductory video below, and more insight and videos on the exhibition here.
