“That’s such a great question, I’m so glad you asked that. You probably have it as a British saying that something’s ‘hitting close to home,’” says artist Nsenga Knight when I ask why she chose the title for her latest thought-provoking exhibition, Close to Home, at the Queens Museum in New York.
Born in Brooklyn as an Afro-Caribbean American Muslim, Nsenga explains that the idea came about during the 2023 International Symposium on the History and Legacy of Muslims in the Caribbean in Georgetown, Guyana, the Caribbean and South American island her mother is from.
As she recently wrote in an entry on her website, “It was the perfect opportunity for me to see my mother’s country of birth, and it was her first time returning to it since she was a teenager. It was an amazing experience, and I’m still blown away by the beauty of Guyana and the kindness of the people I met there.”
Recalling her time as a fellow at the Queens Museum from 2022 to 2024, Nsenga adds that she wanted to delve into Guyanese heritage but did not want to produce academic work, such as a research paper, also mentioning that it was at the symposium in Guyana that one of the organisers suggested, “Maybe you can do something close to home.”
Nsenga explains, while erupting in laughter, “I had to give this abstract to the curator at the museum, and I could have a project modelled even after my home in Cairo. There was something so freeing about the fact I could explore this idea of me and my family as Muslims in the Caribbean, physically leaving Egypt for New York.”
A reflection of both the historic and the cosmopolitan
For Nsenga, Close to Home honours the domestic space as a ‘custodian’ of spiritual and cultural traditions.
Modelled after Nsenga’s family residences from their past six years living in Cairo, the installation’s eclectic atmosphere reflects both the historic and the cosmopolitan.
While furnished in various materials and styles, old and new, this exhibition home is also adorned with artefacts from the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, as well as artworks by Nsenga, including paintings and prints from her Fitra series, videos, photography, and wallpaper that speak to her multidimensional experiences of home, history, and heritage.
“It has this warm feeling, which is what I hear from people (that visit). The aesthetic of the wallpaper gives the idea of fitra and rebirth. There’s the blue lotus flower, which is specific to Egypt. But there’s a photo of my family, of Malcolm X in Africa, and Muhammad Ali that appeared in Jet magazine. I was thinking of my parents’ dining room. I wanted to have pictures instead of the books that were in my Cairene apartment. The dining table has cloth that is typically Caribbean; that is literally my mum’s tablecloth,” Nsenga says.
Home, heritage, and memory
It’s not dissimilar to exhibitions that tell the story of the West Indian home that have emerged in recent years in the United Kingdom, such as the Museum of the Home’s Windrush Day programme, which in 2021 delved into the domestic experiences of the Windrush Generation and their descendants.
Nsenga’s work reminds me of the installation of a 1970s front room, curated by playwright and artist Michael McMillan, which showcased items such as a radiogram belonging to his grandmother, who arrived in the UK in the 1950s, pieces of crochet lace cloths which Caribbean women made to supplement their income, and wall hangings of religious iconographies and family photos on colourful wallpaper.
But Close to Home is an atypical exhibition in that Nsenga has included a scheduled series of social gatherings where tea and coffee from Egypt, Morocco, and Senegal are served. With this, Nsenga invites visitors to appreciate the power of the tastes and smells of ‘home,’ which for Nsenga spans different continents.
Also included is a film of Nsenga’s family having dinner with Guyanese food, a moment that celebrates her mother’s first return to her home country after 53 years since she left in 1960.
“We did a film called Metem, where my family ate three different Guyanese dishes, including Metemgee (a hearty and flavourful stew made of root vegetables and dumplings smothered in coconut milk), and I learned that it is a Ghanaian Twi word. It’s one of the dishes that survived the transatlantic slave trade and appears in different versions across the Caribbean, known by other names,” Nsenga tells The New Arab.
She adds, “And there are conversations about race, identity, and my mother’s memories of Guyana. It speaks to my family’s background of Africans who were enslaved in the Caribbean, the Indigenous people who are from the land and have preserved it, and the Indians who arrived in Guyana as indentured labourers. The Caribbean is like a time capsule of different cultures.”
Intersecting history and identity
Interestingly, the Queens Museum is housed in the New York City Building, originally built for the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair and served again for the 1964–1965 Fair. Between the two events, it housed the United Nations General Assembly from 1946 to 1950.
Among the many historically significant decisions made in this building was Resolution 181, which determined the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.
Nsenga acknowledges the history of this building in relation to the genocide in Gaza, with the presence of miniature paragliders in the gallery, evoking Israel’s military dropping leaflets ahead of attacks on Palestinian territories.
These suspended pieces contain words spoken by martial arts masters at the SWAM Academy of Modern Martial Arts, a Black-Muslim-owned dojo in New York’s South Jamaica neighbourhood. They include poems that highlight the importance of principles such as self-defence, spirituality, and ethical integrity.
As such, this part of the exhibition represents how many of the illustrious and historical neighbourhoods of New York are extensions of home.
Nsenga’s exhibition will run until Sunday, 19 January 2024.
Adama Juldeh Munu is an award-winning journalist who’s worked with TRT World, Al-Jazeera, the Huffington Post, Middle East Eye and Black Ballad. She writes about race, Black heritage and issues connecting Islam and the African diaspora
Follow her on X: @adamajmunu
