Current Performances and Exhibitions

Repossessions is a group exhibition inspired by the concept of reparations: the effort to repair the economic and psychological devastation caused by slavery for descendants of enslaved African Americans. It presents the work of five Black artists commissioned to create artworks based on documents from the enslavement and sharecropping eras in the United States. Chelle Barbour, Marcus Brown, Rodney Ewing, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle (Olomidara Yaya), and Curtis Patterson each offer insightful ways to understand the significance of the original documents, which were offered to the artists by white families working toward repair through an initiative of The Reparations Project in collaboration with Reparations4Slavery and date from the 1860s to the early 1900s. Using a variety of visual strategies, the newly produced artworks contribute to viewers’ understanding of the long aftermath of enslavement and the need for reparations.

The title of the exhibition acknowledges the legally sanctioned possession of one human being by another as the foundation for wealth and power in this country. It also names the process of giving Black artists possession of historical objects and their facsimiles, allowing them to “repossess” them from the family archives of enslavement, and alter their existence. Finally, Repossessions is an indictment of the history of human ownership and its violent multigenerational and international legacy that demand to be confronted and reckoned with to this day.

Repossessions is curated by Bridget R. Cooks, independent curator, scholar, and professor of African American studies and art history at the University of California, Irvine.