Mikael Owunna, “The Resurrection of Eke-Nnechukwu,” 2021. Photograph. (Courtesy of the artist)
Entire galaxies are emerging right now at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. Across all three floors of the museum, artists are contending with spirituality, mythology, scientific cosmologies, and, perhaps most importantly, Blackness. The connections between these themes are at the heart of MoAD’s latest exhibition, which proves that the Black experience is as vast and as limitless as the universe itself.
Timed to the museum’s 20th anniversary, Unbound: Art, Blackness, and the Universe gathers work by an international and multigenerational assortment of African diasporic artists. The pieces on offer are diverse not only in their materiality but in their subject matter, exploring everything from Afrofuturism and origin stories to post-human thought and astrophysics. Even with this ambitious scope, the exhibition achieves incredible clarity and cohesiveness, organizing artwork into three distinct sections.
In “Geo-Cartographic,” for instance, artists map Blackness across “earthly and celestial terrains,” according to MoAD. Here, Mikael Owunna showcases photographs from his Infinite Essence series, which evokes cosmic grandeur through ultraviolet light. In each image, Owunna’s subjects glow with shooting stars, comets, and other celestial motifs, as if cut from the night sky itself. To achieve this effect, the artist hand-painted the bodies of nude Black models with fluorescent paints and then photographed them in complete darkness with a customized camera flash that only transmits UV light. The act of capturing these bodies, then, mimics that of creation, in which entire lives arise from a seemingly blank slate.
“The predominant influences here are creation narratives from Nigerian (Igbo) and Malian (Dogon) cosmologies,” Owunna has said of the series. “Drawing on their influence, this work similarly fuses art, science, myth, and technology to provide a vehicle for Black transfiguration.”
On the second floor, “Religio-Mythic” considers similar questions, delving into creation myths and their relationship to Blackness. Anchoring this section is arguably Harmonia Rosales, who contributes a monumental work from 2021. Titled Creation Story, the canvas depicts the deities Yemayá and Obatalá from the Yoruba religion. The figures occupy separate planes in the painting and are both set against a dramatic landscape: inky waves crash onto a rugged coast, and the rosy sky is steadily darkening into evening. In many ways, Creation Story repurposes compositional principles and stylistic techniques from classical painting, appropriating art historical conventions and cleverly remixing them through Blackness.
Finally, on the museum’s third floor, visitors confront the “Techno-Cyborgian” section, in which Blackness is shaped by technology, hybridity, and the “ability to move fluidly between identities,” as MoAD puts it. Highlights include virtual reality works by David Alabo, all of which explode with bold colors and surreal visuals. The Boy Who Held the World on His Head is particularly delightful, featuring, as its title suggests, a boy whose head is crowned with a globe. Complete with a metallic sheen, the boy slowly rises from desert sand and into the clear sky like an enormous, futuristic cyborg.
“This exhibition is a celebration of the vast conceptual capacity of Blackness, and treats Black existence with the same imaginative and intellectual openness we apply to thinking through metaphysics and the cosmos,” Key Jo Lee, MoAD’s chief of curatorial affairs and public programs, said in a statement. “In doing so, it makes a radical claim that Blackness is not marginal, but central to how we comprehend being, time, and the universe.”
Unbound: Art, Blackness, and the Universe will be on view at the Museum of the African Diaspora through August 16, 2026.
At the Museum of the African Diaspora, artists are exploring the connections between Blackness, cosmology, metaphysics, mythology, spirituality, and the universe itself.
Harmonia Rosales, “Creation Story,” 2021 . Oil and genuine silver leaf on wood panel. (Courtesy of the Zimmer Family Collection)
David Alabo, “The Boy Who Held the World on His Head,” 2020. Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag. (Courtesy of the artist)
Didier William , “Dark Shores,” 2024 . Acrylic, ink, oil, wood carving on panel . (Courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegel, San Francisco)
Gustavo Nazareno, “The Secret Matrices of Creation,” 2025. Oil on linen, triptych. (Courtesy of GUSN Studio and Opera Gallery © Everton Ballardin)
Rodney Ewing, “Celestial Mechanics,” 2023. Dry pigment, colored pencils, and ink on paper. (Courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery, SF, and the artist)
Installation view of “Unbound: Art, Blackness, and the Universe” at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. (Photo: Josef Jacques)
Titled Unbound: Art, Blackness, and the Universe, the exhibition proves not only how vast the Black experience is, but also how differently artists can interpret it throughout their work.
David Alabo, “Companion of Man,” 2025. Cast bronze. (Courtesy of the artist)
Oasa DuVerney, “BLACK POWER WAVE as Bodhisattva Manjushri Sankofa,” 2023. Graphite on hand cut paper. (Courtesy of the artist and Welancora Gallery)
Barkley L. Hendricks, “No Moon at all for Phineas,” 1981-84. Graphite, colored inks and photo transfer on paper. (Courtesy The Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)
Allison Janae Hamilton, “BRILLIANT SKY (For Mary Ann Carroll),” 2025. Resin, mirrored glass, patina . (Photo: Jason Wyche, courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery)
Installation view of “Unbound: Art, Blackness, and the Universe” at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. (Photo: Josef Jacques)
Exhibition Information:
Unbound: Art, Blackness, and the Universe
October 1, 2025–August 16, 2026
Museum of the African Diaspora
685 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94105
Museum of the African Diaspora: Website | Instagram
My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by MoAD.
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