In Their Own Form is featured across the Art Galleries at Black Studies' two exhibition spaces - the Christian-Green Gallery and the Idea Lab.

In Their Own Form presents works that illuminate Blackness as distinct from the oppression, racism, and stereotypes ever present in Western cultures. Here Black identity is mediated through Afrofuturist themes, including time travel and escapism. The Afrofuturist movement—a cross-disciplinary genre that combines science fiction, Afrocentrism, fantasy, technology, and non-Western mythologies—seeks to envision new futures for Black people. The photographs and videos presented here reimagine and repurpose the fraught past, present, and future of the transnational Black experience.

While the thirteen artists hail from various continents, together they employ Afrofuturist strategies: they explore alternative realities, cope with the past as a means of navigating the present, and reimagine the future.  In the works displayed here, personhood, both fantastical and actual, is favored over perceived realities. The featured artists of In Their Own Form contemplate the past and, in the process, reveal possible futures. Moreover, while each artist’s practice includes distinct considerations from within the vast reaches of the African Diaspora, the photographs seamlessly intersect the realities and absurdity of contemporary Black life.

- Sheridan Tucker Anderson, Former Curatorial Fellow for Diversity in the Arts at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago

Artists featured in the exhibition include Alun Be, Kudzanai Chiurai, Jim Chuchu, Teju Cole, Ayana V. Jackson, Mohau Modisakeng, Fabrice Monteiro, Zanele Muholi, Aida Muluneh, Paulo Nazareth, Zohra Opoku, Alexis Peskine, and Mary Sibande.