THE UNDERGROUND LIBRARY: AN ARCHIVE OF OUR TRUTH

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION

BLACK ARTISTS + DESIGNERS GUILD (BADG)
ESTABLISHED 2018, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Robert Earl Paige is a Chicago-based artist, educator, and member of the Chicago Black Arts Movement whose textile designs have helped to popularize pan-African aesthetics in US homes. Fahara: Chicago in View is an architectural intervention upon the historic Carnegie Mansion’s staircase that recalls the tradition of Chicago’s Black artists using buildings as canvases to manifest the interconnectedness of art, life, and community. Since the 1960s, Paige has been collecting images of architecture, artworks, historical figures, and designs from across the city—a visual archive that constitutes an imprint of Chicago. The artist has drawn from this sourcebook throughout his career, referencing shapes, patterns, and messages in his interior and textile designs, sculptures, and mixed-media works. Fahara—a word Paige associates with joy—honors his home city as a creative resource and celebrates its influences such as founding father Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Draping architects Babb, Cook, and Willard’s dark 1902 oak woodwork with patterns influenced by West African textile traditions and Chicago monuments, Paige converges the influences that formed his unique aesthetic eye.

visual description

This is the room that housed the former private Carnegie library. The threshold doorway is shorter than other entryways to accommodate the diminutive stature of Andrew Carnegie. He wanted to walk into this space and appear taller than he was.The room has a high, ornate, ceiling, rows of built-in wooden bookcases, massive arched windows, and a monumental fireplace with green marble trim. Also notable are the gold walls, above the rich wood paneling, that are inscribed with various adages such as, “The highest form of worship is service to man.” 

Although the Carnegie legacy determined the underlying design of the room, it has been modernized and recontextualized with the inclusion of objects that honor African diasporic ancestral legacies in art and design. Paintings on the walls by Black artists tell histories and stories though abstract and representational imagery alike. Books such as Crafted Kinship: Inside the Creative Practices of Contemporary Black Caribbean Makers by Malene Barnett, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones, and On Beauty by Zadie Smith fill the wooden bookcases; as do display cases filled with sculptures, textiles, and even Black Barbies.

The center of the room is comfortably furnished with abstract, organic, and sleek furniture on top of plush blue carpeting depicting constellations of stars. The North Star is the brightest and largest on the carpet. Visitors are invited to use the seating in this room, with sumptuous textures from soft, bronze colored couches to hard wooden stools. Visitors can also pull books from the library to enjoy in this space. Please return them to the shelves after reading.

Acknowledgements

Fabrication support from the Parapluie Group including Kahari Blackburn, Matty DeVita, Michell Nordmeyer, Dorian Sulvain, and Arthur Wright