Exhibitions at Hammonds House Museum

Hammonds House Museum is currently showing Nu Africans, a collaboration between Maurice Evans and Grace Kisa, curated by Christopher Swain. It opened September 18 and runs through December 13, so you've still got a good window to catch it. The museum is at 503 Peeples St SW in Atlanta.

The project grew out of a series of conversations between the two artists. Evans was born in Smyrna, Tennessee, and raised here in Atlanta; Kisa is a Kenyan American multimedia artist also based in the city. Together, they use the term Nu Africans to describe Africans of the Diaspora who, through the circumstances of bondage and oppression, have evolved into their own tribe with its own cultural practices and language. It's an identity Evans describes not as something fixed by geography, but as a "state of becoming."

That idea takes a very concrete form in the work: each woman in the series was costumed by Kisa and photographed by Evans in two looks—a warrior and a queen. The imagery draws on African warrior queens and uses Afrofuturism to imagine an alternative existence that challenges eurocentric aesthetics. Seeing the two versions of each woman side by side lets you sit with that contrast.

It fits the museum's broader mission, too. Hammonds House is a 501(c)3 housed in the former home of the late Dr. Otis Thrash Hammonds, a prominent Atlanta physician and arts patron. Its programming is rooted in the Black experience, with an aim to elevate visionary artists, inspire the community, and preserve a legacy that matters. Nu Africans sits right in that wheelhouse.

Admission is $10 for general admission and $5 for students. The exhibition runs through December 13, so you have a few more months to get over to Peeples Street and see it for yourself.