ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies Harriet Tubman's place in American art as an Afrofuturist icon. Sanford Biggers, Alison Saar, Octavia Butler, Erykah Badu, Janelle Monae, and Pierre Bennu have all reimagined Tubman as a futuristic symbol rather than a symbol of the past. Her legacy and the myths associated with her have provided fertile source material for artists to alter using themes of futurity and fantasy. In the artworks that I discuss, there is a recurring theme of triumph over impossible barriers in order to reach a figural promised land; artists are reimagining slavery's narrative. Starting from Cliff's contention in “Object into Subject” that Harriet Tubman's fugitivity is a radical act that transformed her, I define Tubman's deeds as well as the artists’ interpretation of them as a space of the black female fantastic. In this sense, Afrofuturist thought was happening well into the nineteenth century, making Tubman a progenitor of Afrofuturism. Through Tubman's legacy, Afrofuturism's dominantly male origin story gets a feminist perspective.
