Spring 2018 exhibitions

Basel Abbas + Ruanne Abou-Rahme: And yet my mask is powerful
January 25–July 14, 2018
In the US premiere of And yet my mask is powerful, New York-based Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme combine sound, video, printed images, and found materials to challenge narratives of endless crisis and violence in the Middle East. The work samples text from Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving into the Wreck” to imagine new rituals of recuperation and discovery. Neolithic limestone masks excavated near the Dead Sea and in the West Bank are hacked and 3D printed while research images, plant specimens, and notebooks suggest a living archive that questions colonial legacies and occupation.

Curated by Amy L. Powell, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Allan deSouza: Through the Black Country…
January 25–July 14, 2018
Allan deSouza’s recent work upends and restages iconic colonial narratives of discovery in Africa. Through the Black Country… recounts the expedition to England of Hafeed Sidi Mubarak Mumbai, the fictional great-grandson of the historic figure, Sidi Mubarak Bombay—a formerly enslaved African who, upon gaining his freedom in India, returned to Africa and led numerous British expeditions. Maps, photographs, diary extracts, and a recreated base camp narrate Hafeed’s search for the elusive source of the River Thames. Crossing into London from Calais France, the site of a sprawling refugee camp know as “The Jungle,” the expedition begins in May 2016 and continues during the Brexit vote in June 2017. 

Curated by Allyson Purpura, curator of Global African Art, in collaboration with the artist

World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean
August 31, 2017­–March 24, 2018
World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean is the first major traveling exhibition dedicated to the arts of the Swahili coast and their historically deep and enduring connections to the African interior and the port towns of the Indian Ocean littoral. The exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to view artworks brought together from public and private collections from four continents, including objects generously loaned from the National Museums of Kenya and the Bait Al Zubair Museum in Oman.

World on the Horizon powerfully attests to the Swahili coast as a vibrant site of global cultural convergence, and to Africa’s contributions to the artistic vocabulary of the wider Indian Ocean world. The exhibition will travel to Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC (May 2018), and Fowler Museum at UCLA (Fall 2018).

Co-curated by Prita Meier, assistant professor of Art History at New York University, and Allyson Purpura, curator of Global African Art

About Krannert Art Museum
Krannert Art Museum (KAM) promotes a vibrant exchange of ideas in the visual arts. The museum’s permanent collection contains works of art dating from the fourth millennium BCE to the present, representing a broad range of cultures and varied modes of artistic expression. Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, KAM is the second-largest general fine arts museum in Illinois. 

Krannert Art Museum exhibitions are sponsored in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. And yet my mask is powerful is presented in collaboration with the University of Illinois Department of Asian American Studies and Center for South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies. Paid in part by the Student Cultural Programming Fee.

World on the Horizon is made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.* Additional support provided by the ADAA Foundation Curatorial Award and the Association of Art Museum Curators, College of Fine and Applied Arts Matching Funding Program and Creative Research Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Campus Research Board, and Krannert Art Museum. *Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition or publication do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.