Skip to main content
Black Flyyy
On view through September 26, 2021
RISD Museum
Providence, Rhode Island

In “Black Flyyy,” six short films and videos by artists including Sophia Nahli Allison, Bree Newsome Bass, and Charles Burnett explore self-revelation, craft, legacy, and ancestral knowledge(s) in ways that center Black narratives and challenge white cultural hegemony. These dreamlike meditations consider cultural traditions of and from the African Diaspora related to the meaning of the word fly, focusing on style and originality and making reference to stories of human flight or return to homelands. From stories that undermine stereotypes of Black abjection to Afrofuturist provocations that reimagine memory, these works engage themes of movement, imagination, transcendence, spirituality, and the supernatural.

[Image: Sophia Nahli Allison, New Galaxies from the self-portraitseries Dreaming Gave Us Wings,2017-present. Courtesy of the artist.]