Black Joy
2015 | Central Park, New York City
PROJECT PARTNERS:
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Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Spoken word artist and playwright
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Creative Time
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Central Park Conservancy
A custom-designed centerpiece for Black joy and ritual in Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos
BACKGROUND
Invoking the history of Central Park, the legacy of hip-hop, the Great Migration, New Orleans ‘second line’ parades and contemporary racial politics, Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos was a cycle of musical, dance, and spoken word poetry performances to evoke Black Joy under a parachute-turned-performance space in Central Park in New York City. The performance was part of Drifting in Daylight, an exhibition of public art and performances presented by Creative Time and Central Park Conservancy in 2015.
BLACK JOY
A custom-designed and painted forty-four-foot parachute, Brett Cook’s Black Joy was the centerpiece artifact in Joseph’s performance, the literal and figurative hub for the ritual that was Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos. Besides the title reference, the ten versions of the phrase “Black Joy” painted on the parachute alluded to the global presence of Black people, and the transnational relevance of the ideas in the performance. Yoruba, Xhosa, Swahili, and Arabic directly acknowledged the African continent, a language compass to the four corners of Blackness itself. The English, French, and Portuguese alluded incompletely to the colonial legacy of the Black diaspora. Finally, the inclusion of Haitian Creole was a nod to Joseph’s ancestry.
DESIGN
The early 20th-century African repatriation icon Marcus Garvey chose the colors red to represent the Russian Revolution, green for the Irish revolution, and Black for Black people’s revolution. When Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA), the colors were defined in its constitution to represent red for the blood that unites all people of African ancestry, black for its people, and green for the rich land of the continent. The colors over time have become directly associated with African Americans, and the African American flag.
Underneath the parachute, the gold color integrates the Pan-African layer to include a more global diasporic symbolism. Like the cowrie shells on the top, the gold references the value of Blackness as currency in both commercial and spiritual forms.
African art historian Roland Abiodun once said of Cook’s work that it was “so African, in the sense that in the West art is talked about as a noun, [but] in Africa art is a verb.” Black Joy, like a Nkisi from Congo, was a lovingly devoted object of power whose full potential was realized through social engagement and transformation.
Black Joy Translations:
- English: Black Joy
- French: Joie Noir
- Arabic: أسود الفرح
- Portuguese: Alegria Preto
- Yoruba: Dudu Ayo
- Xhosa: Mnyama Vuyo
- Swahili: Nyeusi Furaha
- Haitian Creole: Kè Kontan Nwa
Translations provided courtesy Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, Engagement and Education Manager, Creative Time.