Professor Alisha Wormsley’s work “There Are Black People in the Future” is part of the exhibition “Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism” on view at the Oakland Museum of California, August 7, 2021 through February 27, 2022.
Afrofuturism is a lot of things. It’s the past, present, and future reimagined through a Black cultural lens. Visionary, spiritual, and generative, it is art, music, literature, and cinema that expresses a just future where Black people and Black ideas thrive. It is fantasy and science fiction that envisions the African Diaspora and Black culture as central in a technically advanced and culturally rich civilization. It is also the ordinary—now— in this very moment and the everyday pleasures that may often be seen as mundane. Afrofuturism is a strategy for Black community building. “Mothership” offers a powerful reason to gather and celebrate Black imagination.