Travel & See

"Kobena Mercer's work here is no less than a discourse on the transformation from multiculturalism to globalization. Beautifully marrying theoretical framings through psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural studies with close readings of specific artists and objects, Mercer offers amazing materialist definitions of diaspora that readers will be mining for years to come. A phenomenal book, Travel & See will be incredibly useful to seasoned and new scholars alike."  - Kellie Jones, author of EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art

"In Travel & See, his second eagerly awaited collection of writings, Kobena Mercer offers a probing and multifaceted exploration of how the dialogics of black diaspora art at once instance and reframe the deep structures of modern and contemporary culture. Featuring thematic accounts as well as essays on individual artists and exhibitions from across the globe, this volume represents a vital contribution to aesthetic discourse from a compelling writer whose journeys and reflections over the last two decades have become models of critical engagement."  - Huey Copeland, author of Bound to Appear: Art, Slavery, and the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America

"In Travel & See Kobena Mercer breaks open some of our most trenchant binaries—politics and art, primitive and modern, Europe and America—by showing us that the black diaspora, with its crisscrossings of the Atlantic and its dense network of affiliations, movements, and practices, is predicated on the polyphony of difference, rather than structural oppositions. Released from this ‘either-or’ thinking, Mercer has written a trenchant yet delicate account of how artists of the black diaspora have demonstrably shaped the art of our time, bestowing it with a layered and rich meditation on some of the most pressing questions we ask of ourselves: who are we, and, perhaps, more importantly, who would we like to be?"  - Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art

"A marvelous work, Kobena Mercer's Travel & See has the potential to introduce a whole new audience to the work of several artists of the black diaspora, while at the same time shifting our understanding of their artistic practice by radically reframing how we understand the very concept of diaspora and diasporic art. Mercer's persistent challenge to an equation of the diasporic histories of these artists with any semblance of identity or identity politics is a soaring accomplishment." - Tina M. Campt, author of Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe

"Travel & See benefits from a retrospective gaze; Mercer’s 30-year career gives him a judicious distance on some highly charged aesthetic movements and issues.... Mercer’s volume ... does not simply collect his past writings; it forces us to see international modernism in a way that has implications for future scholarship both within and beyond the field of black diasporic art. Travel & See posits Mercer as a chronicler not only of the field of contemporary art of the Afro-modern world, but of the inextricable ties of black diasporic and modernism itself." - Sarah Lewis, Art in America

"Travel & See is an essential addition to any art historian’s library.... With Travel & See, Mercer further establishes himself as a leading figure in the field while also modeling the type of work that still needs to be done. The volume shows how Mercer’s writing redefined contemporary art history just as much as it shows how black diaspora artists changed contemporary art." - Uchenna Itam, Shift

"Mercer's optimistic spirit encourages the reader to dare to travel in space and time in order to see better." - Maureen Murphy, Critique d'art

"Subtleties of thought and elegance of expression are characteristic of Mercer's writings, read avidly by those art historians who have sought insight into Black British Cultural Studies, increasingly influential over the last thirty years. Mercer's essays offer a welcome contrast to art-historical scholarship aimed at the specialist, and also to criticism on the contemporary arts of the African and Asian diasporas." - Amna Malik, Art History