Kevin D. Dumouchelle on collaboration, continuity, and the politics of visibility in ‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’ at the Smithsonian Museum of Modern Art.
4 April 2026
Developed through years of conversation with LGBTQ+ artists, ‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’ foregrounds self-representation, community, and historical continuity within African and diasporic art. For curator Kevin D. Dumouchelle, the exhibition is as much about listening as it is about framing, ensuring that artists define the terms of their inclusion while situating their work within a broader, often-overlooked lineage. In this Q&A, he discusses the curatorial process, the role of joy and resistance, and the evolving narratives of African art history.
‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Photos by Brad Simpson, 2026.
Suzette Bell-Roberts: ‘Here‘ emerged from years of dialogue with LGBTQ+ artists across Africa and its diaspora. How did this sustained collaboration shape your curatorial ethos and sense of responsibility?
Kevin D. Dumouchelle: This show is fundamentally tied to the agency, personalities, and individual experiences of its constituent artists. Serubiri Moses, my co-curator, and I really wanted to be very certain that all the ways we were speaking about these artists and their practices were rooted fundamentally in terms they were comfortable with. As best we could, we wanted that to come through in all the products of The Here Project – the exhibition, the publication, public events, and everything else to follow.
The Project began in the research phase by trying to meet with as many artists as we could, in person or via Zoom, to reach a shared understanding that they were comfortable with their work being presented within the framework we had in mind, first and foremost. Given the deeply personal nature of this framework, we did not want to be in the position of including an artist in this conversation if they expressed unease in participating. A small number declined to participate – honestly, however, far fewer than I had initially anticipated.
As a result of those conversations, and ongoing dialogue with the Project artists, we can affirm that the artists identify themselves as members of the broader LGBTQ+ community, however they define those terms, and are ready to be part of this conversation.
‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Photos by Brad Simpson, 2026.
The exhibition situates these practices within a longer, often overlooked continuum of African art history. How did you balance historical restoration with the singularity of each artist’s voice?
Because the research is so artist-driven, this project draws on contemporary art and centres the work of many living artists. However, it was very important for both of us to situate those practitioners within a larger trajectory and, where we could, give a nod to some of the ancestors who helped inform this conversation. Given that the framework relied on confirming that the artists were out and part of this conversation, however, it was a matter of finding artists from previous generations who were demonstrably out themselves. We do have a couple of quite important earlier precedents in the wider Project.
Tobi Onabolu, Dear Black Child, 2021. Video, 18 min. 41 sec. Courtesy of the artist.
One example is this beautiful archive from the GALA Archive in Johannesburg, South Africa, of the mid-20th-century photographer Kewpie and her community. The resilience, love, and joy that come from those archives speak to a larger community that existed in previous generations and was not as well-documented elsewhere. The work of earlier ancestors who tragically left the world quite young, such as Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Nicholas Moufarrege, is also represented in the show, as are the singular mid-20th-century examples of Alexis Preller and Teresa Roza d’Oliveira, within the wider Project.
Given the historical circumstances and the way archives were built and stories were told in earlier periods, fewer voices from previous generations are represented. But we hope this initiative may also inspire further research and recuperative work to resurface other queer ancestors and bring them into the conversation.
Dada Khanyisa, AMA #WCW (2017) National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
With nearly 60 works across multiple media, how did you choreograph the exhibition’s spatial and emotional arc to hold intimacy, kinship, and resistance in tension?
The show is built around eight major themes; they emerged from our research and conversations with the artists themselves. When we looked at our findings holistically, Serubiri and I realised these issues are fundamentally universal human experiences, offering a natural point of connection with visitors’ experiences and interests, regardless of their background or orientation. Among the themes we heard most fully repeated, we realised that joy was one of the most consistent throughlines in many of our conversations with the artists. We thought it was important to ground the visitors’ experience in that experience, so we created something very joyful, welcoming, and celebratory that greets you at each of the three exhibition entrances. But then, once you’re through the exhibition’s threshold, we also wanted the broader complexity of the experiences relayed by the show’s artists to come through.
In centring artists who define identity and belonging on their own terms, how does ‘Here’ challenge inherited frameworks around sexuality and tradition in African art discourse?
I think the show fundamentally is an implicit challenge to the narrative, first and foremost, that homosexuality, queer identity and queer experiences are not native and indigenous to Africa and African history and African culture. We have many clear examples of artists making very explicit claims to a deeper history. We have further grounded this conversation with a number of historical works from our collection that point further in that direction. In the publication, we have also worked with a number of scholars who’ve offered interpretations that challenge and push that conversation further.
‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Photos by Brad Simpson, 2026.
How did the interplay of photography, painting, video, installation, and works on paper generate dialogue and resonance across distinct artistic languages?
The mix and breadth of media that you observe here were quite important to us. As our list of artists on this Project grew, we realised that within our rubric – artists who were out themselves and having conversations about that experience through their work – were making that work in just about every artistic medium that you can imagine. It became an implicit goal for us to be as representative of that experience as we could. We wanted that to be a further statement about the breadth and depth of the experience, the range of stories these artists are telling, and the media they are engaging with. When it came to installing the show itself, we wanted the visitor experience to be multimedia and multisensory, which is why you will also note a distributed play between time-based and fixed media.
In navigating fraught political terrains, how did you centre affirmation and joy without obscuring precarity and ongoing struggle?
It’s a good question – it remains a challenge and requires a balance. I think we made the decision that we were going to centre joy as the first experience because, first, that is where our artists’ voices directed us, and secondly, because there is something lovely and warm and welcoming about beginning in that conversation for the wide range of visitors that come to a Smithsonian exhibition.
The exhibition’s tagline is “We are here.” Thus, even in centring joy, there is a balance between an action-oriented impulse that also comes through much of the work and the voices of the artists themselves. As you walk into one of the first galleries of the exhibition, you’ll see that tension at play. A number of the works claim space, asserting that this community exists and is part of African art history. We wanted visitors to be able to start that conversation in a warm, welcoming way, while allowing plenty of space for that complexity to come through.
‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Photos by Brad Simpson, 2026.
The declaration “We are here and always have been and will be” asserts continuity. How did this emphasis on persistence shape your approach to visibility within a national museum?
That gets back to one of the things that makes this museum so unique in the world. We are, as far as I can tell, the only major public museum uniquely and solely missioned to exhibit, research, and care for African art history across time, media, and geography. So that idea of continuity through African art history is really core to who we are as a museum. Our permanent collection galleries are designed to break down barriers between so-called traditional, modern, and contemporary African art, identifying points of connection and thematic dialogue across time and media.
I wanted to bring that ethos into the ‘Here’ exhibition as best I could. We did that in part by identifying some of the earlier ancestors of the conversation in African art history and by bringing historic works from our collection into dialogue with these themes. 
Ṣọlá Olúlòde, Eternal Light (2020). Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary and the artist.
What institutional and cultural conversations do you hope ‘Here’ will catalyse around representation and the evolving canon of African and diasporic art?
It’s a great question and, in some ways, I think it prompts a really active, fluid, uncertain answer. I think we are making a very clear claim: you cannot tell the full history of African art without including these voices and this story. I hope this is just the start of many opportunities to feature this community and this conversation, both on its own and in dialogue with African art history more broadly. And I hope there will be critical engagement with this Project as well. The Here Project is one of the first of its kind; it has its own limitations – and it’s an opportunity and an invitation for others to pick up the conversation.
This exhibition is on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art until August 23rd 2026.
