Chasing Elizabeth Catlett: Making Meaning of Black Memory and Space in Mexico City
Elizabeth Catlett via New York Times.
Chasing Elizabeth Catlett.
In 1946, renowned Black visual artist Elizabeth Catlett moved to Mexico to enhance her work at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP), a printmaking collective focused on labor movements and social justice. Supported by a Julius Rosenwald Foundation fellowship, Catlett immersed herself in TGP's ethos, viewing art as a means of collective struggle. Mexico soon became her home, and she became a Mexican citizen in 1962.
Her time in Mexico deepened her engagement with themes that were controversial in the U.S. during McCarthyism and the early Civil Rights era, leading the government to label her an “Undesirable Alien” and prohibit her return until 1971.
Eighty years later, in 2026, Tyree Boyd-Pates, founder of NOMMO Cultural Strategies and Freedom School Online, traveled to Mexico City with support from the Black Genius Foundation to honor Catlett and explore an essential question: how does Black memory travel, settle, and take shape beyond U.S. borders?
Tyree's journey aimed to reimagine Black memory and space in a hemispheric context, celebrating Catlett and the legacy of Black artists seeking refuge beyond American constraints.
Inside the Biblioteca Vasconcelos: Looking for Black History
NOMMO’s Founder and Chief Curator, Tyree Boyd-Pates doing research at Mexico City’s Biblioteca Vasconcelos (2026)
The purpose of NOMMO’s trip was to examine how the African Diaspora is recognized or obscured across the Americas, particularly within cultural institutions.
In exploring African-descended histories, we focused on three key questions that reveal the complexities of cultural engagement. We assessed how 1) different countries confront their historical connections to Africa, 2) the representation of Black presence in the arts—both celebrated and often erased—and 3) the vibrant opportunities for Black artists and curators in a transnational context. Each inquiry emphasizes the need to recognize and amplify Black voices within the global arts community.
Upon arriving in Mexico City, we immersed ourselves in its rich culture, which has attracted artists, intellectuals, and political exiles for generations. A highlight of our research was visiting the Biblioteca Vasconcelos, a stunning 409,000-square-foot library that serves as both a civic monument and a haven for book lovers.
While exploring the library's collection, we sought to uncover resources on Black and Afro-Diasporic history, which led us to three significant themes. We found books that 1) examined the intricate relationship between Indigenous communities and Afro-Mexican descendants, 2) uncovered Mexico’s intellectual ties to South Africa’s liberation struggle, and 3) examined writings on Nelson Mandela and the global Black freedom movement, illustrating the interconnectedness of these histories and the themes of resilience and resistance.
Although we found a limited selection of books on Black history in the Americas, NOMMO interpreted this scarcity as a sign that Black history in Mexico is dispersed across various movements and communities, rather than centralized in libraries. This realization shifted our perspective: Black history extends beyond city archives, underscoring the need to trace it to the journeys of the artists who’ve carried it, like Catlett - especially, in her study and interactions with Mexican artists of her day, like Rivera and Kahlo.
Rivera, Kahlo, Catlett: A Triangular Dialogue of Black-Brown Artistic Solidarity
Assorted Images at Mexico City’s Casa Azul and the Anahuacalli Museum (2026).
Upon arrival, every viewer is made aware that Mexico City's artistic landscape is profoundly shaped by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, whose studios and murals serve as vital spaces for national memory. At Casa Azul and the Anahuacalli Museum, NOMMO experienced Mexico as more than just Catlett's refuge; it emerged as a vibrant crossroads of Indigenous, Mexican, and Black radical traditions.
Casa Azul serves as a personal archive imbued with political significance for both artists, while Anahuacalli stands as a monumental tribute to Mesoamerican heritage, highlighting ancestral and indigenous memory. Together, these spaces represent two dimensions of Mexican identity in NOMMO: they are both intimate and civic, and they dedicate themselves to art as a means of truth-telling.
In connecting to Black art history in America, a significant realization for NOMMO was discovering that Catlett studied under Rivera in Mexico. This insight helps NOMMO to reframe our understanding of art history by highlighting the unity between Black and Brown artists in the last eighty years. It also positions Mexico City not just as a backdrop for Black modernism but as a crucial site where Black artistic thought interacted with Mexican muralism, Indigenous aesthetics, and anti-colonial politics following the Harlem Renaissance in the 20th century.
This understanding of art history strengthens our Diasporic framework: Black artistic lineage extends beyond Europe and the United States, emphasizing the interconnected histories of Black and Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. Creative freedom often flourishes in exile, and the works of Rivera and Kahlo, grounded in resistance and collective struggle, resonate with fundamental questions central to Black artistic traditions: Who is seen and remembered? How can we use time to combat erasure?
Like Catlett’s work, their art emphasizes that identity is forged through struggle, memory, and solidarity. Engaging with their spaces, it’s enticed NOMMO to revisit Catlett’s sculptures of Black women not as standalone objects but as enduring, architectural embodiments connected to broader struggles for hemespiric representation and freedom.
Finding Catlett today.
Elizabeth Catlett and her husband, Francisco Mora. Courtesy of Dalila Scruggs.
After visiting Mexico City, NOMMO has refined its vision for the present. We recognize how the Black diaspora's impact is shaped by artists who defy constraints and transcend limiting spaces.
This understanding sheds light on Elizabeth Catlett's choice to move to Mexico. During a period of censorship, the city offered her the freedom to breathe, collaborate, and express herself, solidifying her convictions. We find ourselves in a similar moment today.
Guided by our ethos of “Chasing Catlett,” NOMMO will continue to support institutions, artists, and partners dedicated to depth, integrity, and cultural fluency across borders.
As we imagine a future NOMMO-led research residency in Mexico City, we invite dialogue with collaborators committed to place-based learning, cross-border exchange, and the preservation of Black cultural memory.
This journey is not just about revisiting Black history; it’s an opportunity to shape how Black memory, art, and space are envisioned today and for the future.
Witness and Repair: NOMMO’s Reflections on Greenwood and the Passing of Viola Fletcher
Photo: Gioncarlo Valentine for The Washington Post.
The passing of Viola Fletcher — the eldest known survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre — marks a profound moment in our collective memory. Ms. Fletcher carried nearly a century of witness, offering the world an unyielding account of both the devastation she lived through and the justice denied to generations of survivors and descendants. Her transition reminds us that the work of truth-telling and repair remains urgent.
During a recent research trip, NOMMO visited the historic Greenwood District and toured Greenwood Rising, the site committed to preserving and interpreting the legacy of Black Wall Street. Standing on the sacred ground where brilliance, entrepreneurship, and community once flourished — and where racial violence attempted to extinguish it — brought renewed clarity to the stakes of our work.
Learning this history again in place underscores what the exhibitions at Greenwood Rising powerfully assert: the demands issued by 1921 are still with us. Repair is not symbolic; it is material, continuous, and anchored in accountability. The charge carried by Greenwood’s descendants, scholars, and culture-bearers mirrors a lineage of stewardship that NOMMO proudly aligns with.
Like Ms. Fletcher, NOMMO is dedicated to making sure that the memories of those who perished, survived, resisted, and rebuilt are not pushed to the edges. Their stories teach vital lessons about democracy, freedom, and the ongoing fight for justice in the United States.
In continuing these histories, NOMMO emphasizes that memory is active, serving as a practice of restoring lost or hidden stories. Our approach involves revisiting archives, land, and community testimonies to uncover what has been purposefully concealed. Greenwood highlights that the stories we carry demand guardianship, and that the cultural effort of truth-telling is deeply linked to ongoing struggles for justice, healing, and clear understanding of history. Through research, interpretation, and storytelling, we aim to present a more complete and truthful account of the past as a step toward building a fairer future.
As we celebrate Ms. Fletcher’s life and legacy, we also recognize the responsibility she leaves for us all: to preserve memory, confront erasure, and envision Black futures deserving of the ancestors who shaped this nation.