NBAF is a cultural compass and living archive. Explore what we’re reading, hearing, seeing, and creating below.
In this eagerly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years. She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tár, and to New York to reflect on the spontaneous moments that connect us. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North-West London and welcomes us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic – and the meaning of "the commons" in all our lives.
Throughout this thrilling collection, Zadie Smith shows us once again her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.
Creative AF is our monthly nod to the culture-shapers, boundary-pushers, and vision-bearers whose work makes us pause, move, and think.
With his American Flag Remix series, Atlanta-based visual artist D.L. Warfield transforms one of the most iconic and contested symbols in American culture,the U.S. flag, into a layered conversation about identity, memory, and belonging. His remixed flags are not traditional patriotic displays; they are cultural mirrors that speak to the multiplicity of American identity. By remixing the flag, he suggests that America isn’t monolithic, it reflects different histories, passions, and social realities for different people.
Using a striking blend of materials such as wood, denim, metal, mirrors, leather, glass, and graphic elements, Warfield remixes the stars and stripes to reflect a more nuanced, truth-telling vision of America. These are flags for the people who have never fully seen themselves in the original version. They speak to the beautiful, complex, and sometimes brutal realities of Black life in America.
Across this featured selection, Warfield’s flags explore themes such as resistance and resilience, faith and futurism, and the aesthetics of protest and pride. Each piece is deeply textured, visually and symbolically, and rooted in a creative legacy that draws from his background in design, music, and cultural storytelling.
The American Flag Remix series asks: Who is the flag for? Who gets to remix it? And how can art help us reshape what the idea of America means today?
Bearing Witness at The Legacy Sites
For those seeking an unflinching, soul-stirring journey through America’s racial history, Montgomery, Alabama is a necessary stop. Home to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), this small Southern city holds two of the most profound cultural and memorial experiences in the country: The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
Created by attorney and activist Bryan Stevenson and his team at EJI, both sites confront the deep roots of racial injustice in America—from slavery and lynching to segregation, mass incarceration, and contemporary inequality. These immersive, experiential, and emotionally expansive spaces are designed to restore memory, provoke reckoning, and inspire change.
Art meets history at the Legacy Museum, where visitors begin at the ocean floor of the transatlantic slave trade and walk through centuries of systemic dehumanization, ending in a sobering look at the modern prison system. Through narrative, sculpture, video, holograms, original research, and first-person accounts, the museum makes visible the connections between past and present.
Just a short walk away, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice stands on a six-acre site overlooking the city. Often called “the nation’s first lynching memorial,” it honors more than 4,400 Black victims of racial terror in America. Rows of hanging steel monuments—each representing a county where lynchings occurred—form a powerful call for truth, justice, and remembrance.
Montgomery invites visitors not just to learn, but to bear witness. It is a pilgrimage site where art, history, and memory converge in service of justice. This road trip isn’t easy, but it is essential.
📍 Montgomery, AL
museumandmemorial.eji.org
A sonic tribute to the enduring legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this playlist blends his most powerful words with music that echoes the spirit of justice, resistance, and hope. From gospel to hip hop, soul to spoken word, each track carries the weight and rhythm of a movement that continues to march forward.
