Cristin Tierney Gallery is delighted to announce Dread Scott’s conceptual artwork, the All African People’s Consulate, as a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. This special project is organized by Open Society Foundations and The Africa Center, with support from Cristin Tierney Gallery, Wake Forest University, and Art Events. It is curated by Paul Bright, Director of Hanes Gallery at Wake Forest. The Consulate opens on the Grand Canal at Castello Gallery with previews on April 17th, 18th, and 19th.
The All African People’s Consulate is a functioning consulate for an imaginary Pan-African, Afrofuturist union of countries, promoting cultural and diplomatic relations. The premise of the Consulate is the opposite of most existing immigration chokepoints; while those often function to constrain admittance and movement, this Consulate facilitates ways to let one in. In a convivial setting, one is invited to stay, converse, and interact in organic, spontaneous ways.
In the Consulate visitors can apply for an All African People’s Community passport or visa. They will interview with Consulate staff, where they will discuss their relationship to Africa, their family history of migration, and more. For those of African descent, the Consulate facilitates their citizenship in this futurist, globalist community, presenting them with a personalized passport. Others receive a visa allowing them to visit.
By creating the All African People’s Consulate, Scott engages in an act of inversion. American and European media feeds are replete with images of Black people impacted by violence, in desperate migrations across hot, dry places, or in frequently disastrous situations aboard overcrowded, leaking rafts. But the Consulate offers a riposte to these views of the continent and its peoples. What if, instead of being seen as a place to escape from, there was an African community of nations which was a magnet, a refuge from colonialism and oppression, a destination for immigration and visitation?
The Consulate offers a different option, one long hoped for by freedom fighters and activists: a free state for “Africans,” truly independent and democratic. Visionary Afrofuturist and musician Sun Ra famously proposed that “space is the place”—the locus for free Black people of the diaspora to reconvene. But what if we didn’t have to go that far? What if Africa was that place? What if it always has been?
The All African People’s Consulate is supported by Wake Forest University, Cristin Tierney Gallery, and Art Events. It is presented by The Africa Center and Open Society Foundations.
