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Uhuru

Contemporary Art

With this work, the Brooklyn Museum debuts the recent acquisition of a significant collection of artworks from the Black Arts Movement, considered the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Nelson Stevens was a member of the Chicago-based collective AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). AfriCOBRA used what they called “coolade colors” to create empowering images of African Americans—which they deemed “Superreal images for Superreal people.” Here a woman with an afro (then a highly political hairstyle) casts her gaze upward, as if envisioning a day when African Americans would be truly free. The word uhuru means “freedom” in Swahili, and the choice of language signaled the group’s Afrocentric politics.
PUBLISHER AfriCOBRA
MEDIUM Screenprint on paper
DATES 1971
DIMENSIONS Sheet: 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Unsigned as intended
COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 2012.80.41
CREDIT LINE Gift of R.M. Atwater, Anna Wolfrom Dove, Alice Fiebiger, Joseph Fiebiger, Belle Campbell Harriss, and Emma L. Hyde, by exchange, Designated Purchase Fund, Mary Smith Dorward Fund, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, and Carll H. de Silver Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Nelson Stevens (American, 1938–2022). Uhuru, 1971. Screenprint on paper, Sheet: 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of R.M. Atwater, Anna Wolfrom Dove, Alice Fiebiger, Joseph Fiebiger, Belle Campbell Harriss, and Emma L. Hyde, by exchange, Designated Purchase Fund, Mary Smith Dorward Fund, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, and Carll H. de Silver Fund, 2012.80.41. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2012.80.41_PS6.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 2012.80.41_PS6.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2013
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