Conceptual artist Natasha Marin’s Black Imagination creates a safe haven for Black folx during a time when it is needed more than ever. As Black communities continue to be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, Black Imagination is not only a book but also a project: an invitation to acknowledge and extend beyond the limitations of our current reality by envisioning a future that centers our wishes, healing, and dreams.
My typically salty teenager suggests that getting there is the hard part. She describes the Black Imagination as a metaphysical space one might have to “take a Matrix pill” to get to—except the other side you arrive at is actually inside yourself.
How did that idea expand? With support from other Black womxn, Amber Flame, Rachael Ferguson, and Imani Sims, I was able to host the first Black Imagination exhibit, “The States of Matter,” at the CORE Gallery in Seattle in January of 2018. Spending a month in the dark surrounded by the voices my collaborators and I collected gave me something back. Something I didn’t realize I needed like food, water, and shelter. That exhibition, where participants were blindfolded and led through a maze of voices by our blind-vocalist docent, Ayanna Hobbs, really jump-started my own imagination and so much has followed.
For the most part, what exists in book form never existed in any other form. But on a few occasions, I lovingly transcribed audio I had spent almost a year listening to over and over, so certain pieces could be included in the book. Quenton Baker and Robert Lashley’s pieces are examples—I can still hear their voices in my head when I reread their words today.
Where do you plan to take Black Imagination next? There are Black people everywhere on Earth . . . and I am hopelessly devoted to amplifying our joy, our wellness, and our voices. I would never want to limit myself or cauterize my own incredibly juicy imagination. Let’s do everything. Everywhere. We are wholly boundless, after all.
