In her conceptual mixed-media work entitled, BLACK SPACE, Afatasi hones her textile skills and love of Afrofuturism to dispel the progressive and liberal myth of her hometown of San Francisco. This work captures the many ways in which the city has been criminally complicit to the discrimination, minimization, and purposeful erasure; all while honoring the spaces, contributions, and hidden histories of the American Decedents of Chattel Slavery (ADOCS), most of whom fled extreme violence and discrimination in the American south, and now call the city their home.
Beautifully photographed by Jean Melesaine, BLACK SPACE in this work has many meanings which include physical inhabited spaces, as well as spaces within ourselves, which contain our own definitions of what it means to be Black. This work ties past histories which shaped current realities in order to think of a future possible for folks of ADOCS lineage in San Francisco.