Tadáskía’s Awe-Inspiring Art, at MOMA

A multi-panel work is inspired by the Sankofa—a mythical black bird, among the Akan people of Ghana, whose head turns toward the past as its feet move into the future. Tadáskía’s Sankofa-like figure is a winged, almost anthropomorphic being that darts with excitement and energy, looking back while fluttering forward, through unabashedly rich and colorful landscapes—the world Blackness has helped build. It’s this world—and its feeling of community—that Tadáskía invokes. What would we do without one another, her work seems to ask, and part of the pleasure is that she doesn’t even pretend to have the answers. What she does have is an extraordinary sense of freedom; the reach of her drawings is awe-inspiring. Curved floor pieces, containing bowls of pigmented powders and sculptures made with plant matter, are bright reminders of how we must feed our ancestors, the better to nourish ourselves.About TownMovies