In the lineage of Black women who write and make art from an otherworldly dimension where the spiritual and the material exist in concert, Zoë Gadegbeku’s debut novel, Blue Futures, Break Open, is grounded in African and Afro-diasporic folklore and spirituality, in deep research into African and Afro-diasporic histories and aesthetics, and in the literary tradition around African people with the power to fly away from pain and oppression towards freedom and possibility.
Breaking Open offers a chance to dig into the ideas that provide the frame for the novel to take shape, most importantly, the “Great Camouflage,” Martinican writer and thinker Suzanne Césaire’s theory about how the violence and depravity of colonialism can co-exist with and be concealed by the idyllic beauty of the Caribbean, at least to the uninitiated eye.
The presentation is also an invitation to sit with, watch, and listen to the visual art, films, and music that made the novel possible, from the indigo-stained hands in Julie Dash’s 1991 film, Daughters of the Dust, to the surreal, larger-than-life figures in Billie Zangewa’s tapestries and Mafalda Mondestin’s paintings, and the echoes of Ghanaian highlife in Afro-Cuban jazz singer Daymé Arocena’s music.
Breaking Open will invite the reader-viewer-listener to step into Zoë Gadegbeku’s writing space, literally and figuratively, transforming the gallery into a studio filled with the books, objects, and family photos that shaped the writing.