Meet the Artists: Roberto Lugo

Meet Roberto Lugo, one of the many contemporary artists whose work is featured in Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room.⁣⁣
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Roberto Lugo is renowned for his vibrant reinterpretations of 18th-century European porcelain forms, which he reimagines through the lens of contemporary hip-hop culture and embellishes with graffiti and kente prestige cloth patterns. ⁣
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His works center the portraits of heroes whose visages do not often adorn fine porcelain or whose stories are too often absent from such luxurious wares. ⁣
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On his piece Digable Underground in The Met's Afrofuturist period room, abolitionist Harriet Tubman faces the kitchen and contemporary singer-songwriter Erykah Badu looks into the living room; together, they reflect the ways that the kitchen acts as a site of temporal confluence—a merging of past and present into future possibilities.⁣

Take a virtual tour of the exhibition to explore further.