ABSOLUTAMENTE NEGRO/A/X – THE EXHIBITION
This collaborative exhibition highlights the African presence in our islands and the Diaspora colonized by the Spanish Empire. The works speak to racial and cultural bonds we share despite the colonial oppressive countries that took possession of our islands.
The spirit of our ancestors continue to speak whether we were forcibly taken to Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, St. Croix, and other locations or pushed to migrate/immigrate to the Diaspora.
The power of intentionality in choosing to acknowledge, document and stand in the power of our continued promise to survive and bravely stand to assure a destiny for our Afro-Futuro that is a brave magnificent journey that has yet to be fully told and actualized.
Absolutamente Negro/a/x – the Exhibition continues to examine the aesthetic, racial and cultural linkages that the forced enslavement and dispersal by colonial European governments imposed on Africans from West and Central Africa during the 15th-19th centuries. The mass complexities of stories forged by the imposition of European cultures on the wide range of ethnic African cultural groups committed to sustaining our historical memories, sacred practices, philosophical perspectives, aesthetic intelligence, and climate protective knowledge has formed a praxis of varied methods that some call a cultural clash but in the understanding of the organizers of this historic exhibition affirms that we are liked in St. Croix, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Cuba and other global locations. Therefore, we are committed to continue our work together with the assistance of our elders, communities, scholars, educators, sacred leaders, committed allies and artists to re-encounter ourselves and forge the unifying linkages to tell our monumental stories. The experiences that mirror our individual and collective journeys serves to ground us in understanding our histories and legacies and define our multiple identities, as we seek to frame our futures, while knitting together the complexity of who we are now and to become.
