Note: In August, 2025, this exhibition was one of several Smithsonian Institution exhibitions characterized as ‘objectionable’ by the Trump Administration
The administration’s aim is to impose an ‘uplifting’ reading of American history. This it intends to do so by excluding reference to ‘divisive’ subjects: slavery and the history and present of social justice movements by any racial, sexual or gender minority group.
The Smithsonian, a complex of 19 museums and research institutions, 61% of whose funding is Federal, has been placed under political vetting henceforward.
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Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World.
Tobacco/Spice Roots, designed 2016, this version 2022; digital inkjet print on polyester yoryu
Beatrice Glow, American born 1986. Exhibited at the Baltimore Art Museum in 2022 courtesy of the artist
10.7 million survived the Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.
Displaced Burial / Burial at Gorée,1993, acrylic on canvas
Denyse Thomasos, 1963 -2012, Trinidadian-Canadian, New York. Loaned by the estate of Denyse Thomasos and her gallery to the Whitney Biennial, NY in 2022
Of these 10.7 million Africans it is believed that 380,000 is the approximate number shipped directly to North America: the first ship arriving in 1619.
as above
It is not known how many of the dead of the Middle Passage – suicides or murdered – were women or pregnant women.
as above
Beginning in 1992, a group of North American artists began to transmute anger and sorrow at the aborted lives of these women and of their progeny into a myth of origin, an alternative reading of this genocide, an act of re-created memory.
Nobody Knows My Name #1, 1965, Wolff crayon and charcoal on illustration board.
Charles White, 1918-1979, American. Exhibited at the Guggenheim, NY in 2024 courtesy of commercial galleries in NY
This myth – DREXCIYA – is one of the sources of Afro-Futurism
which is an aesthetic in film and video, the graphic arts, music, literature including comic books and science fiction which link Africans and the African diaspora with the aid of technology, to the fullest expression of autonomous human life.
James Stinson, one of two originators of DREXCIYA said that his theme was: “an infinite journey to inner space within, and to find the beauty that’s inside and bring it out”.
This space, the deep Atlantic kingdom he and his colleague called DREXCIYA, they described in the liner notes of their music.
DREXCIYA was first a sonic realm, a soundscape, an aural journey created in techno sound by two musicians, James Stinson (1969-2002, American) and Gerald Donald (American), based in Detroit, MI.
The duo released a series of eight EP’s on different labels from 1992 to 1997 in Detroit and in the United Kingdom.
This culminated in the 1997 ‘The Quest’.
A compilation of 1997. The purple tracing may identify the Black diaspora
The liner notes for Quest asks this question which is the basis of this myth:
Did the children of the pregnant dead, learning to live in water, swim free of their mothers’ wombs, survive and grow into adulthood in the deep Atlantic?
There did they build an alternative world?
‘Quest’ was followed by 7 more albums before Stinson died.
A design by Abdul Kadim Haqq, American born 1968, Detroit graphic designer, for the first Drexciyan concept album, Neptune’s Lair dating from the 1990’s and recently re-issued by Tresor
The two musicians made a sonic space which fused a physical place with a geographically diffuse world, populated by listeners, imaginations alight, bodies moving to the ethereal, insistent music of techno.
Their medium was their music and their inspiration the waters of the Atlantic which they defined
as protector, giver of life, shaper of the earth. Destroyer.
Their songs had maritime titles.
Graphic novels elaborating on Drexciya mythology have been published, like this one in 2020; authored by Abdul Hakim Haqq, Dai Satto and others.
The duo made their music secretly to avoid ‘contamination’ by other people’s music. They shunned all publicity, played while masked, and avoided the commercialization (‘exsanguination’ for commercial reasons) of their work.
To this day, little is known about the details of their collaboration. Even Gerald Donald’s date of birth is not public knowledge.
This is of much interest because this work was designed to be outside the usual commercial imperatives of life in the US. The purpose of this work was other.
Ecstatic Draught of Fishes, 2022; oil, pigment, palladium leaf and paper on canvas.
Ellen Gallagher, American born 1965. Loaned by the artist and her gallery to the Whitney Biennial, NY in 2022
Ellen Gallagher has been documenting Drexciya since 2001
The duo did not lay out a whole story about DREXCIYA. They left clues.
It is others who have taken up these clues and expanded the story both in images and in words and in more music.
Symbol of the Drexciyan Empire
34 years since DREXCIYA was created, the concept continues to generate creative expression: music, fiction, graphic novels, visual art. The stories are pouring out towards adventure, self-expression; and the liberation which is Afro-Futurism.
The Book of Drexciya, Book 2, penned by Abdul Hakim Haqq continues the story of the first Drexciyan leader, Drexaha
DREXCIYA is one of the ways in which Black artists, and their colleagues, have converted catastrophic human loss into a safe haven for evolving the emotional and intellectual and financial autonomy which evaded and evades so many in real life.
A Promise, 2020, acrylic on canvas.
Calida Rawles, American born 1976. Photo from the artist’s website.
May they be blessed.
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In 2023, the visual and performing artist, Ayana V. Jackson (American born 1977), added her work to the images of DREXCIYA.
She used photos of herself in clothing she designed with her colleagues in the style and pattern of the 18th and 19th centuries.
She also used life-sized models and video.
Her work was displayed at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Washington DC, in 2023.
Iron collar
Dwellers in the Space of the Unknown
Photo from the web of the Smithsonian Museum of African Art
Catch a Wave
The Self-Forgetfulness of Forgetting will Never Be Mine
The Sea Has Nothing to Offer But a Well-Executed Grave.
Photo from the web of the Smithsonian Museum of African Art
The Rupture was the Story
Beaded Bodice
Photo from the web of the Smithsonian Museum of African Art
It’s Only When You Lose Your Mother that She Becomes a Myth
Photo from the web of the Smithsonian Museum of African Art
I Summon the Voice From the Deep
Where There is Origin but No Memory
Crown of metal hair beads, wire, bejewelled fabric on mesh
When the Spirit of Kalunda comes, so does Dianda
Cascading Celestial Giant I
Consider the Sky and the Sea
Some People have Spiritual Eyes