Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

For much of recorded art history, black people have been projected onto fanciful Utopic or Dystopic dreamscapes, that underscore the extremities of their identities. Some of these depictions have been useful to honour the past and to imagine spaces that are ruled by a different, fairer set of relations. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt flips the proverbial script and engages artists who create moments of freedom and upliftment. Rest, relaxation, leisure, intimacy, and domesticity are at the forefront of these pictorial conversations.

Curated by Anelisa Mangcu and Jana Terblanche, this exhibition aims to bring diverse voices into conversation with each other without attempting to be wholly exhaustive. Artistic dialogues differ just as human experiences do, but a common thread of inventing and reinterpreting runs through the heart of the black portraiture movement. The title is taken from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 science fiction infused anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five where it is presented…