An installation by Mildred Howard for Dispersed exhibition.

November 26, 2005 - March 12, 2006

Three artists of African descent were invited to create new works for this inaugural exhibit at MoAD.

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Mildred Howard, and Marepe (Marcos Reis Peixoto) investigate their origins while navigating through contemporary art practices to locate ways to intervene and use modes of expression that highlight their specific cultural voices. As provocateurs, these artists reinterpret and reassess their individual and collective identities.

Consistent with the Museum of the African Diaspora’s focus on telling the stories of the people of African descent, the artists in Dispersed reflect and tell their stories of black lives that have colored the evolution of many New World cultures. Their stories are essential to the human journey out of Africa and are embedded in the fabric of a New World consciousness that their ancestors helped to create.

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, a Cuban artist now residing in Brookline, Massachusetts, explores collective and personal histories, stories and memories that she says “empower the voices that were for many years silenced.” Her work hopes to make the owners of these voices active witnesses to their history in Cuba.

San Francisco native Mildred Howard’s new installation, Safe House, recognizes multiple ongoing narratives in black communities and their transformative qualities with respect to migration, adaptation, and survival. Howard uses vernacular architecture, a shot-gun house or simple lean-to structure to explore these narratives.

Marepe (Marcos Reis Peixoto) is from the community of San Antonio de Jesus, Bahia, Brazil and interrogates assumptions about the conditions of the poor in developing countries, as well as the contradictory results of globalization and corporate capitalism.