And Let it Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora (at Phoenix Art Museum)

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Nan Letènite (In Eternity), 2021,  ​ ​ © Widline Cadet, from the Seremoni Disparisyon (Ritual [Dis]Appearance) series,  Collection of the artist.
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When

10 a.m. July 20, 2022 to 5 p.m. Feb. 12, 2023

Showcasing more than 70 portraits, landscapes, self-portraits, and family archival images, And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora presents the nuanced perspectives of five photographers who are exploring their experiences of the African Diaspora, defined by the voluntary and forced movement of Africans and their descendants over centuries through waves of migration and enslavement.

Featured works by Widline Cadet, Jasmine Clarke, Hellen Gaudence, Nadiya I. Nacordia, and Sasha Phyars-Burgess reflect specific locales, general memories, and multilayered family experiences, drawing on elements from the past and present to consider an imagined future. Experienced collectively, these dynamic photographs illuminate shared and separate understandings of family and history, place and displacement, migration and mobility, and belonging and community, all informed by individual diasporic realities.

The exhibition is curated by Aaron Turner, a regular collaborator with the Center for Creative Photography and an African-American photographer and educator based in Arkansas. Turner’s own photography focuses on the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas and his reflections on the place of the Civil Rights movement within his and his family’s experience. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at University of Arkansas, School of Art, and the Director of the Center for Art as Lived Experience.

And Let it Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. It is made possible through the generosity of the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members.

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