The Africa Center will convene a Writers’ Room to identify and elaborate on the themes of its upcoming exhibition and programming series Movements in the Modern Diaspora, exploring how to present such themes through experimental dialogues between the visual arts and other media. The Writers’ Room is a part of its research and development phase for Movements in the Modern Diaspora, which will explore the myriad contributions that African immigrants have made in America.

Movements in the Modern Diaspora is an evolving, multidisciplinary exploration of movement and its influence and mixed connection with cultural memory, socio-political conditions, and placement as cultural identity. Movement at its root is an almost inescapable yet beautiful influence among diverse groups within the African Diaspora. The curatorial research and what culminates as the exhibition will place movement as a process, shared experience, and basis as a mode of expression.

The Africa Center utilizes new models of curating that fortify collaborative and inclusive ways of generating ideas. For Movements in the Modern Diaspora, it is pursuing this approach by adapting the “Writers’ Room” as a model from within the TV/Film industry and applying it to the visual arts research and development of our upcoming exhibition that will feature Black artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, multimedia arts, and more.