African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta showcases contributions of contemporary Black artists
Dancers in the new film “Permanent: A Couple in Prospect Park.”
Natrice Miller
A museum without walls exploring contemporary art and culture of the African diaspora: that’s the mission of the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta or ADAMA. It hosts exhibitions, programs, and artists’ residencies, aiming to educate and showcase the contributions of Black artists and thinkers throughout the 21st century. Founder Fahamu Pecou joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom and Komansé Dance Theater creative director and founder Raianna Brown, whose new dance film “Permanent: A Couple in Prospect Park” will be presented in collaboration with ADAMA at the High Museum.
Pecou described the inspiration for ADAMA, “an idea nurtured for several years before its founding.” “As I began traveling more and more, doing exhibitions and other types of work, I would often find myself really drawn to the similarities that I saw in Black people in my travels throughout the African diaspora,” said Pecou. “I also… felt like in a city, like Atlanta, that touts itself as this Black cultural mecca, we should have an institution that represents that.”
He added, “While we have several spaces that are dedicated to Civil Rights history and African-American history, they’re all very much spaces of nostalgia, and I was asking the question of myself, ‘What happens if we create a space that affirms us here in the present, and into the future? What does that look like, and what does that say to young people growing up and trying to see images of themselves that affirm?”
The museum’s philosophy is “Everywhere we go, there we are,” an adage Pecou felt captured his sense of the connectedness of Black cultures in locations remote from one another. “That, again, comes out of those experiences traveling, and going to a small village in Panama called Portobelo, and having food that tasted like something that my grandmother made, or traveling to South Africa and having experiences with church choirs that felt like the church choirs that I grew up within South Carolina,” he said.
Komanse Danse Theater and ADAMA have been involved in collaborations since mid-2020 when they connected in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests. Their original idea to bring Komanse artists and the museum together for a one-time performance has since evolved into the “Permanent” project.
These collaborations draw inspiration from jointly selected works of art by Black creators, from which Komanse’s choreographers and dancers envision an artistic response. This year’s iteration of “Permanent” centers on the work of photographer Dawoud Bey in the film premiering at the High Museum.
“The image that we chose, ‘Couple in Prospect Park,’ is a photograph of two young people, a young Black man, and a young Black woman, embracing and facing toward the camera. And so we use that as our inspiration for this film, and one of the themes that we wanted to pull out, of course, was love, and looking at the different pieces of love and the moments that make up a loving relationship,” said Brown. The production features original music created by Okorie Johnson, aka OK Cello, and AshaTune.
*Disclaimer: This event has been postponed due to the rise in COVID numbers. More information and a full trailer for the film can be found here. ADAMA, or the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta, shares information about its projects and events at adamatl.org.
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