Art As Sanctuary : Conjuring an Africana Aesthetic

In Art as Sanctuary, Michael D. Harris considers literal and metaphorical uses of sanctuary in the Black experience and African diaspora art, including locales of spiritual expression, self-renewal, and cultural celebration. Harris offers an alternative framework to the Duboisian philosophy of double consciousness, pushing the boundaries of Africana aesthetic analysis by exploring the cultural signifiers embedded consciously or unconsciously in African diaspora art. Within these works, he reveals how these cultural cues speak to the vibrancy of African American life. While acknowledging the presence of the white observer’s gaze, Harris wishes to relieve the black interior from the panoptic assumptions of that gaze and its disciplines. Art as Sanctuary provides innovative pathways to understand African American visual culture and music as autobiographies of cultural identity and experience.