Liberatory Living

Liberatory Living:

Protective Interiors & Radical Black Joy

Museum of African Diaspora

Ongoing – March 2

MoAD’s latest exhibition features designs, artworks, and environments dedicated to the global necessity for Black people to cultivate domestic interiors not only as spaces of revolutionary action, but also of radical joy and revolutionary rest.

This installation evokes bell hooks’ [sic] concept of “Homeplace” – those concrete spaces which inspire feelings of safety, arrival, and homecoming, reminiscent of the warmth and belonging she experienced at her grandmother's home. It also invokes Elizabeth Alexander's idea of the "Black interior" – exploring space as physical manifestations of room for Black Joy.

“Liberatory Living” features 16 contemporary designers and artists whose atmospheric works all pose the question: What might a space require in order to dismantle destructive colonial legacies and hold Radical Black Joy without fetishizing Black strength and resilience?

A cozy space of calm and serenity found at

"Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors & Radical Black Joy"