April Bey⁠ Power Girl (Incarcerated Queen), 2018 (Detail)⁠ “African” Chinese knock-off wax fabric, hand-sewn into printed canvas with drawing ink, glass beads from Kumasi, Ghana⁠ ⁠ April Bey combines references to popular culture, colonialism, Afrofuturism, and commerce in her mixed-media Power Girl banners, this one featuring an image of a young Queen Elizabeth pictured behind bars. Alluding both to Elizabeth’s early, possibly reluctant, ascendance to the British throne, and to the reproduction of her likeness on the currency and goods of Commonwealth nations, this portrait depicts more symbol than substance. Bey titles this series after Kendrick Lamar’s Black Panther songs, which celebrate the resilience of Black women—true power girls, rather than a monarch who has inherited the exploitative legacy of colonialist practices without the power to assert individual agency.⁠ ⁠ aprilbey_⁠ 21cChicago⁠ #21cPopStars⁠ #21cMuseum