How to Carry Water

Most of the movement that propelled the African diaspora was forced, driven primarily by the transatlantic slave trade of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries. How to Carry Water engages this history and the impacts of colonialism, exploring how contemporary artists have responded to the effects of global dispersal. From reworked historical photographs to large-scale installations, the exhibition demonstrates the evolving identities and novel artistic approaches forged by diasporic artists around the world. The exhibition also features artists living and working in Africa, illustrating the expansive dialogues between practices on the continent and those beyond. These artworks exemplify innovation with conventional materials, offer deft critique colonialism, and highlight a visual culture that is the direct result of the refusal to be defined by subjugation.

How to Carry Water draws its title from Lucille Clifton’s poem “water sign woman” (1989), a meditation on cultural memory and the slippage of an old way or place over time. Inspired by Clifton’s imagery, the exhibition reframes diaspora as a pouring out of people and culture into new contexts. Rather than centering on loss, these works consider how experience can be reshaped through the lens of diffusion. Together, they ask, how can a traumatic history be reclaimed and transformed into a new way of looking, thinking, and being?

How to Carry Water is curated by Adeze Wilford, Blackmon Perry Curator of African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora. It is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

All exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art are underwritten by the MBMA Exhibition Fund: Lead support provided by Kay Clark, and Maggie and Milton Lovell, with additional funding from Anonymous, Irene and Ron Ayotte, Gloria and Kenneth Boyland, Deborah and Bob Craddock, Susan and James Edelman, Debi and Galen Havner, Sally Hergenrader, James R. Humphreys, Betty and George Johnson, Kristen and Jay Keegan, Valerie and Carl Person, Deborah D. Tipton, Bill Townsend, and the Doris S. and Hubert Kiersky Charitable Remainder Trust.