Material memories and Black womanhood: Asserting presence in conventional university archives through collective-declaration

Black women in Harlem, New York City, challenge and disrupt conventional archival practices by collecting, wearing and documenting dress through their own voices, bodies and materials. This research uses a case study of Harlem-based multimedia artist Dianne Smith and her archival repository at Barnard College to introduce a new theoretical concept: collective-declaration. This concept captures how Black women assert individual agency while simultaneously forming a collective resistance to oppressive structures, claiming their rightful place in the past, present and future as place-makers through fashion archiving. We focus on Smith’s archive as a central example, particularly in its connection to the life and legacy of Zora Neale Hurston – Harlem Renaissance writer, thinker and anthropologist – whose influence shaped the archive’s development. By defining and curating her own archive, Smith both affirms her historical legacy and contests the erasure and exclusion of Black womanhood from conventional university archives. Through the practice of collective-declaration, Smith reimagines and transforms the traditional archive into a new place, rooted in spatial presence and the dressed Black body, offering a powerful intervention into dominant archival frameworks.