Apr 26–Aug 11, 2019

Colored People Time: Quotidian Pasts

W.O. Oldman with masks and headdresses, c. 1920, gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 inches. Te Papa 0.027326. Pacific and Atlantic Photos Ltd.
About

Quotidian Pasts, the second chapter in the three-part exhibition series Colored People Time, reconsiders the trafficking of blackness through the colonial practices of collecting, commodifying, and exhibiting people and objects from the African continent. This exhibition, produced in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, turns its lens toward early-twentieth-century anthropological displays. The long history of the exploitation of both African people and their cultures is told through the configuration of a few small objects—a photograph, a journal entry, a letter. Featuring a newly commissioned work by the artist Matthew Angelo Harrison, Quotidian Pasts questions: What confers authenticity? How does an object change when dislocated from its time and place within the context of the museum?

Related Programs

This exhibition will be accompanied by a series of dialogues with scholars, critics, and artists, on colonialism, restitution and repatriation, and the role of the contemporary art museum in addressing these issues. Program information will be posted on ICA’s website.

Curator/Publication

Colored People Time: Quotidian Pasts is organized by Meg Onli, ICA Assistant Curator and Monique Scott, Director of Museum Studies at Bryn Mawr College. A fully illustrated catalogue will be published in early 2020.

Major support for Colored People Time: Quotidian Pasts has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Additional support has been provided by Arthur Cohen & Daryl Otte, Cheri & Steven Friedman, and Brett & Daniel Sundheim. Exhibitions at ICA are supported by Stephanie and David Simon.

Installation Views
Books & Editions
Colored People Time book cover

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Over the year of 2019, the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania presented the experimental exhibition Colored People Time. Organized by Meg Onli and divided into three distinct chapters–Mundane Futures, Quotidian Pasts, and Banal Presents–the exhibition used the black vernacular phrase “Colored People’s Time” (CPT) to explore the ways that dominant notions of time have been used to control and condemn black people across times and spaces. CPT names a political performance by black people to evade, frustrate, and ridicule the enforcement of punctuality and productivity, key disciplinary structures of capitalism. In addition, CPT challenges and disavows the predominant opinion that being “on time” is the only way of being “in time.” The artists represented within this exhibition include: Aria Dean, Kevin Jerome Everson, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Carolyn Lazard, Dave McKenzie, Cameron Rowland, Sable Elyse Smith, and Martine Syms; accompanied by historical objects from the Black Panther Party, Sutton E. Griggs, the National Institutes of Health/Getty Images, and the African Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Doubling as a reader on the phrase that inspired the exhibition, Colored People Time includes reprints of seminal essays, newly commissioned writing, poetry, and a performance score ready to be activated in a time to come. This catalog includes text from Huey Copeland, Eve Ewing, Michael Hanchard, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Amber Rose Johnson, Carolyn Lazard, Jessica Lynne, Tausif Noor, Meg Onli, Gregory Pardlo, M. NourbeSe Philip, Monique Scott, Martine Syms, and Michelle M. Wright.

Dimensions
7 x 10 inches
ISBN
978-0-88454-149-3
Pages
320
Binding
Flexibound
Publisher
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania
Year
2020
$40.00
ISBN 978-0-88454-149-3
Publication Date
2020
Authors
Huey Copeland, Eve Ewing, Michael Hanchard, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Amber Rose Johnson, Carolyn Lazard, Jessica Lynne, Tausif Noor, Meg Onli, Gregory Pardlo, M. NourbeSe Philip, Monique Scott, Martine Syms, and Michelle M. Wright.
Designer
Studio Ella
Authors
Huey Copeland, Eve Ewing, Michael Hanchard, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Amber Rose Johnson, Carolyn Lazard, Jessica Lynne, Tausif Noor, Meg Onli, Gregory Pardlo, M. NourbeSe Philip, Monique Scott, Martine Syms, and Michelle M. Wright.
Publisher
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania
Price
$40.00