Brace yourself for a moving journey if you visit “If This World Were Mine,” artist Michael Clemmons’ solo exhibition at Ubuntu Gallery, 5423 Germantown Ave.
The exhibition consists of 21 works created over 25 years, “offering a deeply felt, visually rich meditation on ancestry, identity, and spiritual reclamation,” Clemmons said.
A native Philadelphian, Clemmons comes from a family that included several artists. “My mother was extremely creative,” he said. “She made her own clothes. At Halloween, I would say, ‘I want to be a lion,’ and she would make my costume.”
Clemmons’ brother Walter, his elder by 18 months, was a self-taught sculptor. “He made sculptures with found wire of different colors, the kind you used to see in old telephones,” Clemmons said. “Sometimes manufacturers donated wire to him.”
Art history
Clemmons attended Philadelphia public schools with strong arts programs, as well as Saturday classes and workshops at places like South Philadelphia’s Fleisher Art Memorial, which offers low-cost and tuition-free classes. Clemmons graduated from the now-defunct University of the Arts, where he studied painting and arts education.
“If This World Were Mine,” an exhibition whose title pays tribute to a 1967 hit written by Marvin Gaye and recorded with Tammi Terrell, includes mixed-media painting, ceramic sculpture, and installations. Clemmons created many of the pieces while working at Temple University for 30 years, ending as director of workforce development in one of the school’s programs.
Clemmons has exhibited at Millersville University, the August Wilson Center for the Arts, the University of Puerto Rico, and other sites. His work can also be seen at Germantown’s The Colored Girls Museum, 4613 Newhall St. “The Colored Girls Museum will celebrate its 10th anniversary in September,” said Clemmons, one of the museum’s co-founders.
Many of the exhibition’s works suggest the contemplative, including a painting that shows a Black man alone, thigh deep in a wide river. The scene’s peacefulness brings to mind the traditional Negro spiritual “Wade in the Water.”
“Water is a constant in my work, the idea of being submerged in, or emerging from, water,” Clemmons said. “Water is transformational.”
Clemmons depicts water as a source of deliverance in an installation inspired by an event in 1803 at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Georgia. The incident involved a group of Ebo (also Ibo or Igbo) people, recently kidnapped from West Africa, who chose to drown themselves rather than live enslaved. A figure that could be a divine spirit holds a protective wing over a man sinking in the water. Paintings, literary works and other art forms inspired by this act of resistance have become known as “The Ibo Landing Series.”
Spiritual and grounded
Spirituality informs the whole exhibition. “My uncle was a Baptist minister,” Clemmons said. “I joined Enon Baptist Church when I was 12 or 13. Spirituality is deeply embedded in my family.” The image of the small white church one sees in some rural Black communities appears in some of Clemmons’ paintings.
Clemmons’ paintings and installations also feature Adinkra symbols. Developed by the Akan people of Ghana around the 1700s, many scholars say, the symbols represent concepts or proverbs. One of the best-known Adinkra symbols is the Sankofa. It shows a bird moving forward and also looking back with an egg in its beak. The Sankofa is often interpreted as retrieving wisdom and knowledge from the past in order to build a better future. The symbols, which have spread throughout the African Diaspora, are found on fabric, jewelry, furniture, and more.
“Adinkra symbols are beautiful, but they also convey a worldview,” Clemmons said. “I value them aesthetically and because they represent part of a West African heritage.”
Clemmons often makes Adinkra symbols with gold leaf because it suggests cultural wealth. At times, he represents doors, ladders, and lines that could be portals to other eras using this precious metal. “Instead of time being linear — past, present, future — I want to convey an African sense of time, its fluidity,” he said. In that way, Clemmons’ work contains aspects of Afrofuturism, which combines science fiction, history, and fantasy in exploring the Black American experience. It seeks to connect people from the Black diaspora with their forgotten African ancestry.
The exhibition seems to resonate with people of differing African heritage. A man from Ghana saw a painting and declared that it showed Ghana. “I told him that I had never been to Ghana,” said Clemmons. “He said, ‘Oh, yes you have!’ He insisted,” Clemmons said. For other visitors, the exhibition evokes the southern U.S. “Maybe there is a subtext or narrative embedded in Black people even if they are not aware of it.”
Clemmons aims to deliver a broader message. “‘If This World Were Mine’ speaks to a reimagined reality where Black history is known, Black presence is sacred, and imagination becomes a form of liberation,” he said.
A gallery talk will take place at Ubuntu, 5423 Germantown Ave., July 26, 2 p.m. Check ubuntufa.com for details. The exhibition closes July 30.
