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2024, “In This Place: American Dreams”
This work is an adaptation of Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series, Panel No. 3. Referencing an iconic painting that documents the Great Migration highlights Black Americans’ continued journey towards liberation. Though much has changed since the Reconstruction and Great Migration periods, the residue and upholding of racism and the mistreatment of Black Americans remain. This piece depicts a vision of achieving liberation through a new migration to rural land where we can build our own communities founded on sustainability, mental wellness, spiritual balance, and healthy food sources. The photo-collaged cityscape highlights contemporary hardships that we aim to escape such as militarized policing, an unhealthy food industry, industrialization, pollution, consumerism, and poverty. The red-winged blackbirds symbolize the dawning of a new beginning, a new awakening, and protection.
—Aisha Imani Sanaa, artistLabel
2024 post: Throughout 2024, we're looking back at the 100 year history of art at the Mulvane. This recently acquired work is by Lawrence-based artist Aisha Imani Sanaa, whose mixed-media art often celebrates Black culture. "A New Migration" looks back to the work of iconic American artist Jacob Lawrence. His "Migration Series" examined the Great Migration, the movement of six million Black Americans from the rural South to urban areas in the 20th century.
"This piece depicts a vision of achieving liberation through a new migration to rural land where we can build our own communities founded on sustainability, mental wellness, spiritual balance, and healthy food sources. The photo-collaged cityscape highlights contemporary hardships that we aim to escape such as militarized policing, an unhealthy food industry, industrialization, pollution, consumerism, and poverty. The red-winged blackbirds symbolize the dawning of a new beginning, a new awakening, and protection." —Aisha Imani Sanaa