“Contemporary African Diaspora: Memory in Motion,” African Presence Art Exhibition on Display

The Memory Board by Phillipe Dodard

Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel once said “memory feeds a culture, nourishes hope and makes a human, human.” The artists whose work will be shown in Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) 9^th Annual African Presence Art Exhibition can relate to that sentiment.

That’s because the work of these 12 international artists explores the connections between cultural memory, history and the creation of art in the exhibition titled Contemporary African Diaspora Memory in Motion.

The exhibition consists of more than 60 paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media creations by renowned master artists of African descent. It will be on view Feb. 2 through March 28, 2012 in the Second Floor Gallery of NSU’s Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center, located at 3100 Ray Ferrero Jr. Boulevard in Davie.

Contemporary African Diaspora Memory in Motion is organized by NSU in collaboration with the Florida Africana Studies Consortium, and demonstrates the importance of visual and related expressive forms of culture to the development and remembrance of kinship.

Dress designed by Toriola Famuyiwa of Toriola Custom Fashions. Dress was shown during NY's African Fashion Week.

Also on display is a dress designed by Toriola Famuyiwa of Toriola Custom Fashions, who showed the dress in New York during African Fashion Week. A male mannequin on display features a contemporary shirt made in Ghana and on loan from Flora’s African Queen, Ltd.

“Within the global Pan-African world, art production psychically remembers identities through validating and refreshing experiences,” curator Babacar Mbow said. “The pivotal argument here is that through art, histories and traditions are vivified and become vessels of memory. In this psychological framework, memory is not passive and the mind is not simply a repository from which memories can be retrieved.”

The exhibition is FREE and open to the public at NSU’s Alvin Sherman Library during the following hours:

Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Sundays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

For more information about Contemporary African Diaspora Memory in Motion, please call (954) 262-5350. For more information about NSU’s extensive offering of Black History Month events, please visit www.nova.edu/blackhistory.