UNBOUND: Art, Blackness & the Universe is a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the intersections of Blackness and the cosmos. Curated by Key Jo Lee, MoAD’s Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs, the show invites visitors to reimagine Blackness not as fixed or earthbound, but as infinite—expansive, unknowable, and cosmically rich.

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Inspired by Lee’s essay, “Gesturing Toward Infinitude: Painting Blue/Black Cosmologies,” the exhibition asks: What if we approached Blackness with the same wonder we bring to the universe? What if, like a black hole or distant star, Blackness could be a site of mystery, power, and transformation?

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Featuring a global and intergenerational group of artists—including Lorna Simpson, Rashaad Newsome, Gustavo Nazareno, Harmonia Rosales, Didier William, and many more—the exhibition spans painting, sculpture, installation, and video. Works traverse the historical and the speculative, the scientific and the spiritual.

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Three core themes guide the journey:

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• Geo-Cartographic: Blackness mapped across earthly and celestial terrains.

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• Religio-Mythic: Blackness as origin, cosmology, and creation story.

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• Techno-Cyborgian: Blackness as posthuman—shaped by technology, hybridity, and the ability to move fluidly between identities. The posthuman is not one fixed form, but an evolving state of becoming, capable of multiple perspectives.

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More than an exhibition, UNBOUND is a philosophical inquiry and sensory experience. A rich array of public programs, an onsite learning lab, and the museum’s first community-written labels ensure depth and accessibility for all visitors.

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Ultimately, UNBOUND invites us to wonder: What else can Blackness be? When freed from institutional constraints and historical reductiveness, Blackness becomes luminous—an expansive mode of being, a cosmology of creative potential. The show invites us not simply to observe, but to wonder. To stand at the edge of the known and look out—into the dark, where unbound possibility lives.