Unite

1969, printed 1971

Unite, 1969, printed 1971. Barbara Jones-Hogu (American, 1938–2017). Color screenprint; image: 56.9 x 76.7 cm (22 3/8 x 30 3/16 in.); sheet: 64.7 x 84.1 cm (25 1/2 x 33 1/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Karl B. Goldfield Trust 2021.14 © Barbara Jones-Hogu Barbara Jones-Hogu was a founding member of AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), a Chicago-based artists’ collective founded in 1968 to forge a distinctly Black form of contemporary art. Unite is among the group’s most recognizable images and features a crowd with fists raised in the Black Power salute. Jones-Hogu was struck by the potential of this simple gesture to unify. An accomplished and innovative screenprinter, she produced the layered forms of color and text for each impression herself. Barbara Jones-Hogu began to work primarily in screenprint, the technique used here, after the tools she used to make woodcuts were stolen while she was a student in Chicago.