Reframed Within the Powerful Stories of Black Spaces, Rashaad Newsome’s Parenting While Black Returns to OMCA
As part of the Oakland Museum of California’s Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain exhibition, Rashaad Newsome’s Parenting While Black returns to OMCA with powerful new resonance. Originally featured in OMCA’s previous special exhibition Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism, this striking work invites viewers into an emotional and deeply personal meditation on care, vulnerability, and survival in Black parenthood.
Created in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and an uprising for racial justice, Parenting While Black is far more than a collage. Newsome’s hybrid practice spans collage, sculpture, assemblage, and performance—blending Black and queer cultural histories into a singular visual language. The piece, framed in painted mahogany and resin, evokes the weight and fragility of raising Black children in a world shaped by systemic violence and white supremacy.
Rashaad Newsome, Parenting While Black, 2020. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California, Courtesy of the Rashaad Newsome Studio, New York.
The college was created in reflection of the devastating losses of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others, channeling the grief and fear felt by those they left behind, especially parents. It speaks to the layered realities Black parents face—of preparing their children for a world compelled by systems that refuse to value their lives, and still fearing it will not be enough.
Originally from New Orleans, Newsome was drawn to Oakland’s deep-rooted Black cultural history and spirit of radical creativity. His work resonates deeply with the mission of Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain, which explores how Black communities have resisted dispossession by forging spaces of care, identity, and belonging. Parenting While Black embodies this resistance on an intimate scale, channeling the daily acts of vigilance and emotional labor that Black parents undertake to protect their children in a world shaped by racial violence. Situated within the exhibition’s themes of Homeplace, Social Fabric, and Dispossession and Repair, Newsome’s work becomes a visual site of both mourning and fortitude. It honors the private spaces, both physical and psychological, where Black resilience is cultivated, while also amplifying broader conversations around systemic oppression and the urgent need to reimagine safe, affirming futures. Parenting While Black is at once a personal elegy and a collective call to witness, a visual prayer for protection, remembrance, and change.
Come see this profound piece in its new context at OMCA, surrounded by works from other visionary artists who are reshaping narratives of home, resistance, and belonging.
