On February 27th, The Museum of Modern Art opened the fourth installment of their Issues in Contemporary Architecture series – Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. The exhibit, along with its accompanying publication, examines the intersections of architecture, Blackness and anti-Black racism, as well as contemporary architecture in the context of how systemic racism has fostered violent histories of discrimination and injustice in the U.S.
Reconstructions: Blackness and Architecture in America
The ten commissioned projects in the exhibit take a look at how people have mobilized Black cultural spaces, forms and practices as sites of imagination, resistance and refusal. Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Mario Gooden, Walter Hood, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. Mitch McEwen and Amanda Williams respond to narratives and conditions. The architects, designers and artists involved each focused in on Atlanta, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Oakland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Syracuse through their individual projects. The exhibit also presents David Hartt’s new film, On Exactitude in Science (Watts), which looks to the dimensions of Black life and spaces in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Horizontal Desk, Emanuel Admassu
The accompanying publication includes essays by the curators, the advisory committee and invited scholars, as well as new photographs by artist David Hartt, commissioned for the exhibit. Designed by Brooklyn-based Morcos Key, the publication features texts and visual materials – photographs, reproduced drawings, digital renderings, images of models – by each of the ten exhibition participants.
If you’d like to see Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America in person, it’s on view through May 31st on the third floor of MoMA. Appointments can be made online.
Emanuel Admassu. Planetary Scar (Mid-Atlantic Ridge). 2020. Silk, wool, and other threads. 7′ x 7′ (213.36 x 213.36 cm)
Flower Antenna, Felecia Davis
Germane Barnes. No Beach Access. 2020. Digital collage. 15 x 21.5″ (38.1 x 54.61 cm)
Trolley, Mario Gooden
Subway Kiosk, Olalekan Jeyifous
Stoop and Model, Sekou Cooke
V. Mitch McEwen. Film still of R:R.
Models, Walter Hood
Amanda Williams. Spatial Diagrams. 2020. Ink on paper. 26 x 12” (66.04 x 30.48 cm)
J. Yolande Daniels. Race Plate. 2020. Digital rendering. 24 x 36″ (61 x 91.4 cm)
Installation photos: Robert Gerhardt
Kelly Beall is senior editor at Design Milk. The Pittsburgh-based graphic designer and writer has had a deep love of art and design for as long as she can remember, and enjoys sharing her finds with others. When undistracted by great art and design, she can be found making a mess in the kitchen, consuming as much information as possible, or on the couch with her three pets. Find her @designcrush on social.
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