Exhibition Takes Art To New Dimensions

Tea Montgomery’s installation greets the visitor who enters the art show at the Lab at ConnCORP for 6th Dimension, an Afrofuturist festival running in New Haven and Hamden now through Oct. 21. 

Its choice of materials, its structure, and its placement in the space create a combination of moods that clash against one another, whether it’s the soft drapery versus the raw pipes in the ceiling, the gauzy light from the windows versus the ripped fabric crawling across the floor, or the rattan chair, redolent of the famous photograph of Huey Newton, but empty now. Is it waiting for the next Huey? Who might that be? What future might they lead us into?

Montgomery’s piece is an apt introduction to the rest of the show, which weaves together the work of about 20 artists and the gloriously half-raw space on the second floor of the Lab at ConnCORP at 496 Newhall St. in Hamden to create a moving, absorbing exhibition about Afrofuturism and how the ideas within it — possibly the most powerful set of ideas in American culture — can help us shape a better future.

Afrofuturism as a way to reimagine the future for Black people, and Black liberation in the present, has been around for generations (think Sun Ra) and in recent years has moved further into the mainstream (think Black Panther, or the increasing ascendance of science fiction author Octavia Butler). It appears in movies and visual art, in music from P. Funk to OutKast to Janelle Monáe, in books from Samuel Delany to Octavia Butler to New Haven’s own Tochi Onyebuchi. But ​“the actual terminology and framework are still very new to a lot of people,” curator Juanita Sunday said. The show does much to address that; people who come to the show being exposed to the ideas for the first time are likely to come away with a working understanding of the basic concepts, as well as what those concepts can look like when put into artistic practice.

Sunday’s own introduction came from a workshop at Connecticut College called ​“How to Think Like an Afrofuturist,” conducted by art historian, curator, and speaker Ingrid LaFleur. From it she got a sense of it as a way of approaching art, work, and life. ​“Now I use it as a way to reimagine possibilities and question everything,” she said. ​“When people are talking about systems, they say ​‘it has to be this way because that’s the way things are.’ But why? Why can’t we break that down further? Why is there not a different avenue? How can we start exploring those different ways?”

6th Dimension is dedicated to exploring those questions. ​“It started with an exhibition I did in New London earlier this year under the same title,” Sunday said. Connecticut College had invited Sunday to do a show. ​“The first thought that came to mind was exploring Black realities across time and space,” including science fiction ideas like time travel. ​“My dream of dreams was to actually have it in three cities at one time” — New London, Hartford, and New Haven altogether. Instead, she staggered them. For the New Haven iteration, she thought, ​“what if just explode the idea of this exhibition and turn it into this deconstructed festival, and do all these different types of programming around Afrofuturism?”

That idea is coming to pass. In addition to the art show at The Lab at ConnCorp, 6th Dimension features a block party at Possible Futures on Thursday, Aug. 30, focusing on Fred Hampton; book club socials on Sept. 6 also at Possible Futures and on Oct. 4 at Bloom; a tea party at Bloom on Oct. 1; a summit on Oct. 14 at NXTHVN; and a screening of Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer and a dance party at Best Video on Oct. 19. (See 6th Dimension’s website for details.)

But in another sense the art exhibition, which runs through Oct. 21, lies at the heart of the festival, in both the art itself and its location on the Lab at ConnCORP’s second floor. The space — a not-yet-fully-renovated school — and the art work together in a powerful way.

Sunday first saw the space while working for the International Festival of Arts and Ideas and connected with Myles Tripp, ConnCORP’s director of audience development. ​“They were interested in having something in the interim” in the space ​“before it was developed.”

That space currently comprises ​“8,000 square feet of deconstructed raw space,” said Tripp. ​“My vision was always to bring art to this space.” When Sunday ​“shared her vision of what she wanted, I instantly knew this was the place to do it.” Not just for the chance to make ​“every room an immersive experience,” but because ​“this is an old school, so you’re taking those communal vibes and the teaching vibes. Everyone is being taught here. You’re leaving better than you arrived.”

Sunday put out an open call to find artists. Some who answered were artists she had worked with before, including in the previous New London show. Others she worked with for the first time. A few artists — such as Tea Montgomery, Nadine Nelson, and Lotta Studios — did site-specific installations. A few artists collaborated on their pieces. For the others, Sunday grouped together pieces that work so well together that it is as if they collaborated, to moving effect.

In one room, the works of Greg Aimé, Jasmine Nikole, and others come together in a meditation on how to collapse time. As a statement on a chalkboard in another room relates, ​“the original African religion believed we experience the past, present, and future all at the same time.” The idea is heady, even if accepted at face value. The power in it is palpable. It suggests how our thoughts, words, and deeds might redefine the past, change the present, and open up possibilities in the future, all in one fell swoop, if we’re clear-eyed enough. Aimé and Nikole’s shifting figures help us understand what those kinds of thoughts, words, and deeds might look and feel like.

Another room features work by Ashley the Creator, Jahmane, Sunday, and others. These pieces blend together and work in the space so seamlessly that they seem to take into much of the chaos of our current social moment, while at the same time reminding us that the questions laid bare before us, about race and gender and class and identity, have been around forever. The vibrant pieces include elements of street art, found objects, and gardening; look closely and you see that plants are growing here. A simple but profound idea emerges that gets to the heart of the Afrofuturist project. Few other aesthetic movements have taken such a hard, unvarnished look at the problems American society faces; of those, even fewer have reached into the scariest depths of those problems and emerged with such a message of bruised hope and the promise of the possibility — and imperative — of transformation and transcendence. 

The raw space on ConnCORP’s second floor amplifies the message. We live in a time where it can seem things are falling apart around us, and it’s easy to focus only on the loss, the pain in that. Afrofuturism tells us not to look away, but to look harder, and see in the dissolution the chance to rearrange and reimagine, to change and grow something new, in ourselves and in others, and in the world around us. Besides, in the end, is there really any other choice?