Black Bodies on the Cross
Victoria McCraven, '19 Homma Family Intern
Published by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, 2019, 4 pages
The United States of America was founded on the principles of religious freedom and equality, yet was built through slave labor and the dispossession of native peoples. Black Bodies on the Cross investigates the duality of black Christianity, which is rooted in both colonization and a celebration of black culture. The exhibition attempts to capture that dissonance as seen through the eyes of postwar and contemporary black artists. In depicting black subjects, these artists explore the ways in which the black experience can be understood as part of a universalizing Christian narrative that, ironically, often excludes black subjects.