“Art constitutes one of the rare locations where acts of transcendence can take place and have a wide-ranging and transformative impact,” bell hooks wrote in Art on My Mind: Visual Politics, adding that “aesthetics nurture the spirit and provide ways of rethinking and healing psychic wounds inflicted by assault from the forces of imperialist, racist, and sexist dominations.”

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

“When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting” engages with these ways of rethinking and healing. The exhibition, on view at Kunstmuseum Basel, presents a panoramic view of Black figurative painting, having originally been produced for and by the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, where it was shown from November 2022 to September 2023. Koyo Kouoh curated the exhibition both in South Africa and here with her team, so the Swiss iteration is much the same. “We think that it’s a canon that is so accessible… we didn’t want to translate or dilute or augment it—we wanted it to be as comprehensive as possible,” Kouoh has stated.

The exhibition title inverts Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries “When They See Us”, shifting the vision from other (they) to self (we). Note that this heightened visibility and agency is, similarly, embraced in Tate Britain’s show “Now You See Us: Women Artists In Britain 1520–1920.” Rather than focusing on the legacy of colonialism, racism and violence inflicted on the Black figure, the exhibition explicitly highlights a........

© Observer