Erika Dalya Massaquoi

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AFRICA FORECAST: Fashioning Contemporary Life launched the 20th anniversary of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art with a bold curatorial vision that positioned fashion as both cultural expression and political force. The exhibition examined fashion through two intersecting lenses: the ever-evolving global marketplace and the distinctive ways Black women throughout the African Diaspora shape, imagine, and construct their lives through style.

Drawing on her expertise in global fashion systems, social science (Massaquoi holds an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago), and visual culture, Erika Dalya Massaquoi brought critical insight to this groundbreaking project. With a background spanning apparel, marketing activations, and contemporary art, she interpreted fashion as a living language—one capable of expressing agency, identity, resistance, and transformation.

The exhibition featured garments, video, photography, painting, and sculpture created by Black women artists and designers who redefined lifestyle aesthetics in highly imaginative ways. Their work challenged conventional definitions of fashion, positioning style as both a creative and political act. For these artists, fashion extended beyond adornment into activism, cultural production, and everyday revolution.

Leveraging her curatorial experience at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the Seattle Art Museum, Massaquoi infused AFRICA FORECAST with an audience-centered approach. The exhibition invited visitors to engage with fashion as a dynamic, evolving dialogue between art, commerce, politics, and lived experience.

Through this vibrant exploration of style and self-determination, AFRICA FORECAST encouraged viewers to see fashion across continents and communities as both a deeply personal and radically transformative force.