inHarlem: Simone Leigh Marcus Garvey Park

inHarlem: Simone Leigh synthesizes the multimedia artist’s recent forays into the public realm with her longstanding interest in African and African-American material culture and female identity. The installation, a particularly elaborate imba yokubikira, or kitchen house, stands locked up while its owners live in diaspora, inserts three structures, reminiscent of imba yokubikira (kitchen houses) from Shona-speaking rural areas of Zimbabwe, into the landscape of Marcus Garvey Park. Approximating the scale and outer texture of the round, clay-and-thatch imba, the structures are arranged in a cluster to suggest a community; however, all are without entrances, to both celebrate a diaspora and evoke the displacement it involves.

Enter Marcus Garvey Park at 123rd Street and Madison Avenue or 124th Street and Fifth Avenue to view inHarlem: Simone Leigh.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.