Nuotama Frances Bodomo: Afronauts

February 1–May 1, 2022

Location: Gallery 301

Cost: Free

Afronauts, a 2014 short film by Ghanaian-born filmmaker Nuotama Frances Bodomo, is the Museum’s latest video series installment. The 14-minute, black-and-white film follows a team of astronauts as they train for a mission to the moon. Throughout the film, Bodomo addresses themes of colonialism, nationalism, and Afrofuturism—an aesthetic and a philosophy that explores African diasporic culture and technology.

This video was inspired by the Zambian space program in the 1960s and follows then-17-year-old astronaut Matha Mwamba, the woman at the center of this historic mission. Led by schoolteacher and revolutionary Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy began as an unofficial program with aspirations to beat the Soviet Union and the United States to the moon.

Combining true events and fiction, Bodomo set the film on July 16, 1969, the same day as the Apollo 11 launch, and wove audio and video clips from its historic moon landing throughout the narrative. Though the Zambian mission did not send an astronaut to the moon, the program successfully asserted the ambitions of its country, which had become independent from the United Kingdom in 1964.

Set historically in the years following this independence, Afronauts draws many parallels with today, highlighting the persistent and unfounded underestimation of African nations, the continued fight for racial and gender equity, and the international competition for scientific advancements.

Nuotama Frances Bodomo: Afronauts is curated by Victoria McCraven, 2020–2021 Romare Bearden Graduate Museum Fellow; with Hannah Klemm,, associate curator of modern and contemporary art.