Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room
New Exhibition at The Met Fifth Avenue
on view November 5, 2021
In this video, we are visiting a new period room installed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This project has roots in the homes of Seneca Village, of which only a fragmented history remains. Like other period rooms throughout the Museum, this installation is a fabrication of a domestic space that assembles furnishings to create an illusion of authenticity. Unlike these other spaces, this room rejects the notion of one historical period and embraces the African and African diasporic belief that the past, present, and future are interconnected and that informed speculation may uncover many possibilities. Powered by Afrofuturism — a transdisciplinary creative mode that centers Black imagination, excellence, and self-determination — this construction is only one proposition for what might have been, had Seneca Village been allowed to thrive into the present and beyond.- from metmuseum.org
