Apart from a few stragglers who seem to have a fatefully spontaneous Wednesday afternoon free to visit BAMPFA’s “A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration,” the exhibit was virtually devoid of visitors when the Daily Californian visited. But even with all the empty space left by the midday slump, there’s barely room for an echo with the rich profundity reverbating from the exhibit’s mixed medium displays. The Great Migration comes alive in the honorary pieces to modern migratory echoes heard from twelve artists alluding to a common theme: a diaspora doesn’t conclude in the final destination.
With an April 13 opening and Sept. 22 closing date, BAMPFA’s latest exhibit is in the starting mile of its marathon. But with upcoming events lined up — including an accompanying film screening from featured artists Akea Brionne and Jamea Richmond-Edwards, a performance from Brontez Purnell and his six-piece band, and a roundtable discussion with the co-curators of the exhibit — “A Movement in Every Direction” is beginning its steady trot into uncovering a previously unseen side to the story. Given the previous exclusion of testaments from modern communities still reeling from the diasporic shift from Great Migration records, the exhibit serves as a historical addendum. This traditionally unexpressed sentiment is translated into artistic footnotes in the pieces hanging on BAMPFA’s walls.
In a brief digression from historical context (though largely unencapsulating of the event’s extent), the Great Migration encapsulates the time period between 1915 and 1970, when racial violence and inequality prompted a move of a large majority of African Americans from their Southern residences to locations spanning the American map. The move saw an influential explosion of Black culture in both rural towns and urban cityscapes, leaving a resonant echo in the modern frameworks of these areas. Yet, BAMPFA’s exhibit is not meant to function solely as a history lesson — it’s a personal and analytical look at the events of the 20th century, and their penetrating parallels within a modern terrain. Reflective of the Great Migration’s diverse smörgåsbord, BAMPFA’s exhibit uses varying mediums to cover every nook and cranny of a multifaceted history.
One of the most imposing structural creations in the exhibit, Theaster Gates Jr’s double-wide trailer replicas are the vehicles (literally and figuratively) that convey both a recentering with and dislocation from Southern culture. Though the trailer itself is a sculptural feat, the shelves — chock-full of Southern relics, canned and pickled food, and religious iconography — make the installation a concentrated space for the artist’s cultural fingerprint. However, the materials salvaged from scattered locations attest to a disarray that raises the question for all Great Migration lineages: is it a requirement that one come from a singular place?
In a sculptural continuity, Torkwase Dyson’s “Way Over There Inside Me (A Festival of Inches)” features four trapezoidal monoliths arranged in a conversing circle and connected by angled metal rods, made of glass just transparent enough so that the four panes multiply in the reflections. The abstract notions are both deeply contextual and intimately personal, intonating Black communities forced to “bend space to live” as well as her own investigation into the relationship between Black communities and space.
Jamea Richmond-Edwards’ painting “This Water Runs Deep” is an almost Biblical approach to legacy and an exploration of artistically rendered security otherwise un-assured. Influenced by her mother’s family’s displacement after natural disaster wreaked havoc on their family-owned land in Mississippi and Arkansas, her Noah’s Ark-esque depiction imagines her ancestry on a safe-guided journey through time. The past, present and future collide on the canvas, with Richmond-Edwards’ carefully watching over as the all-seeing eye at the top of the painting.
“A Movement in Every Direction” proves that the Great Migration doesn’t just exist in history, it echoes through modernity. BAMPFA makes additional echoes with scheduled events the next few months of the exhibit’s run time — make sure to catch them before Sept. 22.
