Roland Ayers, Cataclysm, Rebirth New World

This historical and visual epic connects past and present. The boat-like form that carries Ayers’s assembly of figures is a reference to the slave ships that brought Africans to America by force—the cataclysm. The boat is also a house of sorts, and the figures seem more contemporary than historical, for this is a statement about the current day, and the rebirth or flowering of African American culture.