New Acquisitions: Maxime Banks

Afronaut Anatomy Autoethnography Archives: Quantum Blackness Spacetime Orbits As Coordinates Of Being

The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is honored to have welcomed a new acquisition into the permanent collection, thanks to the generosity of supporters of the Museum Purchase Fund.

Maxime Banks describes herself as “a time traveler of the Black American Diaspora.” Her family has roots in Wisconsin and Illinois, as well as Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. She attended the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, earning a BS in Biology/Pre-Medicine, a BFA in Painting and Drawing, and a BA in Philosophy. She began her art study in Paris, France, where she lived for two years.

Banks currently lives in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. She moved to Australia to conduct post-graduate research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Can you describe the importance of Afronaut Anatomy Autoethnography Archives: Quantum Blackness Spacetime Orbits As Coordinates Of Being to your oeuvre?

My artworks are cultivated within a diasporic geographical spacetime in which the concept of “home” is in constant flux. Within the Afrofuturist Anatomy Autoethnography Archives, I am reimagining Black womanist beingness in the Universe through portraiture, sound, performance, painting, collage, poetry, hand-printing, quantum poetics, and spoken word.

The inspiration for Afronaut Anatomy Autoethnography Archives: Quantum Blackness Spacetime Orbits As Coordinates Of Being is Black girlhood. Using the metaphor of the formation of dark matter, celestial stars, and black holes, I explore how Black girlhood is actually the most luminous entity in the Universe.

What would you like viewers of your work to understand about the nature of your practice?

Afronaut Anatomy Autoethnography Archives: Quantum Blackness Spacetime Orbits As Coordinates Of Being is a self-portrait. My artworks are archives of my personal experiences, thoughts, and material experiments, which I document on the verso in extensive notes. I use handmade pigments and my own hair creating DNA self-portraiture that reference ancestral memory and mathematical concepts such as the helix coil and knot theory. The mathematical artifact is a cosmic coil counter-narrative shadow reflecting the historical violence of erasure, the fear and resistance to acknowledge the vastness of Black woman beingness that I embody, revel, and exalt on my spiritual journey.

What sparks your creativity?

The Universe! The mathematics of the Universe. The knowledge that mathematics is the language of the Universe and Mama Nature. The ontological mysticism of mathematics, cosmology and my infinite imagination.

Banks’ work, Afronaut Anatomy Autoethnography Archives: Quantum Blackness Spacetime Orbits As Coordinates Of Being, will be on view in the exhibition imaginary i, scheduled to open in November 2023.