Unlearning the epistemic narrative of neocolonial artwork: the counter gallery of August Wilson’s <i>The Piano Lesson</i>

This article probes the integration of contemporary literature as an alternative praxis for suspending the epistemic narrative of neocolonial artwork. A major example that reinforces the role of contemporary postcolonial and Indigenous literatures in repositioning western epistemologies and retracting the circulation impact of colonial galleries is the dramatic output by African American playwright August Wilson. The article demonstrates how the case of Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson (1987) debunks the monopolization of western galleries as the custodians of globalized knowledge. In The Piano Lesson, Wilson mobilizes an array of collectibles that prop effaced Indigenous African paradigms in the globalized discourse of balance that is retained in French Henri Matisse’s paintings The Piano Lesson (1916) and The Music Lesson (1917) and their African American adaptation in Romare Bearden’s painting The Piano Lesson (1983). Wilson’s The Piano Lesson transforms Bearden’s artistic recreation into recalcitrance by decolonizing Bearden’s gallery from passive nostalgia and reinstating the African patterns of resilience that contributed to the survival of an autonomous Black culture. Mapping the subversive trappings in Wilson’s The Piano Lesson will also illumine the relevant contribution of the play’s performances, particularly Broadway performance, to the extended activation of Wilson’s project of a decolonial theatrical gallery.