Dhyandra Lawson, Assistant Curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), travelled to Dakar, Cape Town, and Johannesburg to conduct research towards the making of her exhibition-in-process titled Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st Century Art and Poetics.

The gift of travel is not only experiencing new places but being able to examine familiar places with new eyes. The distance between where one is, and where one’s ancestors came from, conjures images, words, sounds, and textures. Artistic creation is the fabric of Black Diaspora. Black Diasporic studies sit on the edge of history and poetry.
– Dhyandra Lawson

In Dakar, Dhyandra visited the Dakar Biennale, Dak'Art OFF, Villages des Arts, Black Rock Senegal, and Raw Material Company; in Johannesburg, the Wits Art Museum and the Bag Factory; in Cape Town, Zeitz MOCAA and the Norval Foundation. In addition to these events and institutions, she visited sites of historical resonance and artists' studios, engaging cultural practitioners in informal exchanges and wandering conversations.

Diaspora is like quilting – one sews places they see with images they can vaguely remember or imagine. Diaspora combines the clear present with cloudy impressions of the past.
– Dhyandra Lawson