Re-Imagining the Black Atlantic

In 1993, Black British scholar Paul Gilroy published The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, which highlighted “the paradoxes and overlooked narratives of modernity” (Tanya Barson) by positioning the Black experience not as solely African, American, British, or Caribbean, but as a Black Atlantic culture that exceeds ethnicity and nationality. And this transculturality of the Black Atlantic makes modernity readily comprehensible. Furthermore, it is Black expressive cultures, in part, that bolstered this Black Atlantic structure; however, Gilroy was primarily interested in music and the role it played in the creation, articulation, and reproduction of the counterculture. Yet, images have long held powerful roles on both sides of the Atlantic in defining the inseparability of modernism and Blackness. This is strongly evidenced by the groundbreaking 2010 exhibition inspired by The Black Atlantic called Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic. In honor of Gilroy’s book, this panel invites reconsiderations of The Black Atlantic that center visual culture. Submissions may address but are not limited to the following questions: How does visual art fit into the overall discussion about the Black Atlantic? What role does the concept of diaspora play in Black Atlantic visual cultures in a post-Black Lives Matter, post-COVID moment overdetermined by social media? What are some characteristics of Black Atlantic visual expression that distinguish it from dominant conceptions of modernity? Finally, how are Black artists negotiating the terrain in the remaking of the Americas and Europe in view of new global migratory movements?