The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) is launching its first benefit auction, as artists, donors, businesses, collectors, and individuals have banded together to ensure the vitality of this significant institution. During this critical need, the art world is in solidarity to support the institution as a foundational platform for artists of African descent in the Bay Area and throughout the world. Partnering with Artsy, the online auction will open on April 21 and close on May 5, 2020.
Monetta White, MoAD Director, said, “It is so important especially right now when our worlds are so unsure, to remember that the work MoAD is doing as an arts community is vital, necessary, and life-affirming. Art, and access to art, is transformative and we have a responsibility to hold and create cultural spaces. In these times of extreme challenge and uncertainty, we must work together as a community, to collaboratively sustain our cultural institutions. We call on artists, donors, businesses, collectors, and individuals to support this institution as a foundational platform for artists of African descent in the Bay Area and throughout the world. Arts institutions are important now, more than ever, as artists continue to teach us new ways of existing.”
Adia Millett, an Oakland based artist whose work was included multiple MoAD exhibitions including Black Refractions: Highlights from the Studio Museum in Harlem (2019) and Where is Here (2016) notes, “This unexpected cultural transition is not a time to isolate, but a time to observe and listen to the wisdom of our creative voices. We must remember that it is ART, which has not only taught us to see the beauty and the struggle of our past, but the wisdom and hope of our future.”
Adia Millet makes installations that challenge viewers’ assumptions about their homes, fears, desires, and politics. She achieves this by recreating bizarre, sometimes disturbing, home interiors. For instance, her well-known “pre-fabricated innocence” (2004-10) series caters to our penchant for voyeurism, inviting viewers to peer into eight miniature, seemingly abandoned houses. The slightly nonsensical décor—a wrapped poinsettia presumably intended as a gift, a dining room table with a single chair, an elegant chandelier juxtaposed with a handgun—reflects cultural and societal deficiencies. “I attempt to promote a space where site specificity, found objects, craft, concept, and form create a dialogue for characters to develop and for memories to resurface,” she says.
Featured artwork --
The Future's Eye (2019), Cotton and Polyester Fabrics, Feathers, Diameter: 92 cm
Learn more --
https://www.artsy.net/auction/moad-diaspora-unite-artists-of-african-descent-benefit-auction-2020
