Description:
Bound book with pages of black paper and no text.
Label Text:
Exhibtion label text from Faint/Hidden/Shrouded: Contemplating Obscurity (March 27-May 10, 2024):
At the time of his passing on August 27, 1963, in Accra, Ghana, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois was actively engaged in one of his primary missions in life, the creation of the “Encyclopedia Africana.” He imagined an exhaustive compilation of "scientific" knowledge encompassing the histories, cultures, and social institutions of people of African descent throughout the diaspora. According to Du Bois, an encyclopedia could, even if only symbolically, unite those throughout the African diaspora and serve as a tool to bring cultural and historical clarity and undermine racist ideologies.
The Encyclopedia Africana serves as a symbolic version of Du Bois's never fully realized dream. Hand-bound with black pages, in honor of what could have been but never was, the pages of Fernandes’s Encyclopedia are void of text. - Graduate curators: Ruthie Baker, MFA Studio Arts; Simone Cambridge, MA History of Art & Architecture; and Olivia Haynes PhD in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMASS
Exhibition Label, 40 Years / 40 Artists, January 22–March 8, 2015:
Of particular inspiration to Fernandes is W.E.B. Du Bois’ life-long but unfulfilled dream to create The Encyclopedia Africana, extolling the past and present greatness of Africans and African-Americans. Fernandes has created a symbolic version of the book. - Loretta Yarlow
Tags:
conceptual art; literature; race; African American Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+2013.59 |
