Uhuru

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.