Africa Restored (Cheryl as Cleopatra) by Kerry James Marshall is on view as part of “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica” at the Art Institute of Chicago. Using his trademark black pigment, Marshall’s massive sculpture of Africa is draped with chains, medallions, golden letters, drawings, maps, and framed portraits. It is a stunning artwork. Photos of it don’t do it justice—it’s so large, so complex. The objects that adorn the piece are tangled and entwined together. It all overlaps and interconnects; there’s no obvious beginning or end. Every time the work goes on view, another piece is woven in. It’s a never-ending story.

Africa, the Motherland. The cradle of humankind. It’s made up of 54 countries and over 2,000 languages. It’s the second-largest and second-most populated continent on the planet and the ancestral home of the Black diaspora. There isn’t one history to be told about Africa; there are infinite. The story is never-ending, far-reaching, and extraordinarily complex. The Art Institute’s massive survey wrestles with this vastness by bringing together a broad swath of African and Black art that reflects the beauty and nuance of the African story. 

Pan-Africanism, the driving ideology behind the exhibition, is the belief that all African descendants are connected by a shared history and bound by an inseparable destiny. Across the African continent and throughout the diaspora, millions of individuals have a stake in Pan-Africanism. To some, Pan-Africanism manifests as a political movement, one focused on governance and policy that advance the independence and unity of Black and African communities. For others, it’s a cultural movement that promotes Black and African culture and history. Philosophically, it’s an effort to reconcile the atrocities committed against Black people and shape an African future that is self-defined and self-determined. Anti-colonialism, Black diasporic reunion, and reclamation of the Black historical identity—these foundational themes of Pan-Africanism are frequently found in Black art worldwide. The exhibition explores and expounds on those ideas in the past, present, and future.

Beginning in the past, the exhibition opens with monumental imagery. In the main gallery, Awol Erizku’s dazzling bust of Nefertiti spins suspended in a corner, shimmering and beckoning like a golden disco ball. Tremendous arched murals, Art of the Negro by Hale Aspacio Woodruff, span the walls like stained glass windows in a cathedral. The paintings of elongated Black and Brown figures depict vibrant scenes and symbols of the African story, the scale of the works elevating them to something almost spiritual. Curated by Antawan I. Byrd, Adom Getachew, Elvira Dyangani Ose, and Matthew S. Witkovsky, the exhibition is the culmination of five years of research and contains 350 objects from four continents, and covers a timeline of 100 years. It’s an ambitious undertaking, from the volume of works to the multiplicity of stories and ideas to the geographical expanse. As such, each of the 11 or so galleries is incredibly dense.

In the next gallery, red and green Pan-African flags reflect the contention within Black national identities, as a portrait of Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian revolution, regally looks on. Beyond that, in a gallery for Garveyism, the sculpture Large Sailboat (Grande Veleiro) by Arthur Bispo do Rosário, with its array of flags, sits in the middle of the room, perched like a slave ship. Adjacent to it is Yto Barrada’s Tectonic Plate, a three-dimensional wooden map with moveable pieces depicting shifting continents—recordings of Garvey’s pontifications play in the background. Further on, we’re asked to contemplate the literal meaning of Blackness with Marlene Dumas’s starkly white painting, Albino, as the sound of African drumbeats throb and pulsate overhead. The area designated Agitation houses Kader Attia’s raw and demanding installation, Asesinos! Asesinos!, which stirs a sense of communal passion and activism. Winding through it all is a timeline featuring hundreds of publications on Pan-African thoughts. Organized by categories and subcategories, stories, and themes, it’s a dizzying amount of content. The curators intricately piece it together but it’s just so massive. It is nearly impossible to digest in one visit.

Africanness/Blackness as a global experience is a fraught and complicated story. This exhibition brings together works from artists who are Afro-Brazillian, South African, Ghanaian, Egyptian, Caribbean, Black American, Black European, and so much more. Each contends with their experiences of Blackness, each infuses their knowledge and culture into their artwork. Any of the subjects could be a robust stand-alone exhibition but displayed together all at once is so powerful. The overwhelming content is a reminder that there are so many voices and so many stories to tell. The artworks aren’t in conversation, they’re telling their part of a greater story. Pan-Africanism can be so much: Afro-Utopianism, Afro-Futurism, Afro-revisionism. Here it’s used to create a truer identity than the one foisted upon Africans by Western influences. It’s about universal self-determination. “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica” feels like a study of the people and their culture, like a culture seeking to reunite and understand itself.

“Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica”
Through 3/30: Mon 11 AM–5 PM, Thu 11 AM–8 PM, Fri–Sun 11 AM–5 PM; Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, artic.edu/exhibitions/10157/project-a-black-planet-the-art-and-culture-of-panafrica, adults $32 ($40 Fast Pass, $27 Illinois residents, $20 Chicago residents), seniors 65+, students, and teens 14–17 $26 ($34 Fast Pass, $21 Illinois residents, $14 Chicago residents), children under 14 and Chicago teens 14–17 free