The Tate Modern Museum is a collection of more “modern” art pieces. The building itself is more than 371,000 sq ft in floor space area with two separate sides consisting of 4+ floors each. The Tate began its construction in 1995 at its current location, the old Bankside Power Station after needing a bigger space.
Two exhibits immediately caught my eye and they really resonated with me for personal reasons. The first was the “Marquette of a Monument Symbolizing the Liberation of the Spirit” by Antoine Pevsner. The exhibit shown below is a bronze cage with a hanging ball-like structure in the middle. The way that I was able to understand this piece was finally breaking free of any confinement. Another interesting aspect of this exhibit that I found was how organic the shapes were even though the sculpture is made of straight lines. To me, this symbolizes the natural stage of fully becoming yourself and finally taking a step into who you are.
The second exhibit that spoke to me was “Flag” by Fred Wilson. This exhibit feature twenty-seven flags from African/ African Diaspora nations. All flags in the piece had no color and were completely black and white. Something that many people do not really know about me is that my mom’s family several generations back is from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) Africa. As soon as I walked into the room and saw that flag, I immediately felt a sense of pride. Being able to travel thousands of miles away from home and see a huge part of me and my family culture filled me with a word I can only describe as humble. Hearing stories of how my family had to leave and everything that they sacrificed makes me proud to not only call myself American but to be a Zimbabwean as well.
Theatre in London U of A 