Black El Dorado
In 1900, for the Paris International Exhibit, W.E.B. Dubois curated an exhibition of photographs, maps, and infographics documenting the Black American experience three decades removed from emancipation. Collectively, the images presented Black life in its full spectrum: homemakers, laborers, artists, craftspeople, in worship, in community, and at play. It was part propaganda, part celebration of black joy and excellence, and a vision of a future that might be.
Dubois used the term “double-consciousness” to describe the precarious place that Black Americans occupy: the unstable ground between their Blackness and Americanness and the desire to unite the two. These “unreconciled strivings” are an ongoing project for Dubois, an attempt to merge the “double self into a better and truer self”.
The project is an attempt at this act of reconciliation, as it speculates on other possibilities and the new narratives that could emerge from Dubois’ collection. Black El Dorado, an ongoing project, uses this dense archive of images, coupled with East African origin mythologies, to imagine new futures and ask questions of our collective past.
