Visitors who step inside the Digital Arts Space will put on VR headsets to experience a sensory-rich performance by L.A.-based dancer Hvrmony Adams, with Kumasi-based Vida Osei narrating the dance’s origin story in the Twi language to honor the dance’s ancestral lineage. The venue will be adorned with African fabrics and textiles. At the top of each hour, the Black Planetarium experience extends onto the adjacent Jerry Moss Plaza, where a five-minute pre-produced meditation session will be shown on the plaza’s LED screens, inviting participants to pause, breathe and reflect beneath the open sky.

“This free exhibition is not only a visual and auditory feast, but also a space for rest, reflection and deep connection. Given all the trauma Angelenos have endured throughout the year, beginning with the wildfires and continuing with civic unrest, The Music Center Presents Black Planetarium: Uncharted Anthologies provides a welcoming respite to reflect and recharge,” said Rachel S. Moore, president and CEO of The Music Center. “Kidus Hailesilassie’s intricate fusion of African language, dance and storytelling is the ideal vessel to invite audiences to pause, listen and imagine new narratives as well as experience the new Digital Arts Space at L.A.’s performing arts center.”

Black Planetarium is the recipient of the 2025 ARS Electronica S+T+ARTS Prize Africa Award of Distinction. It made its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival; Hailesilassie was among 11 visionary artists selected to showcase their groundbreaking storytelling projects at the festival’s Immersive program. During its production, it received the Black Public Media and IDA Pare Lorentz grant and fellowship and was supported by the MIT Open Documentary Lab, IDFA, the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum des images. In January 2026, Black Planetarium will be shown at the Beijing International Arts Biennale.

Based in Los Angeles, Hailesilassie is an Ethiopian American spatial artist and futurist whose work bridges film, installation and media art. Drawing on his architectural background, he explores spatial improvisation deeply rooted in Afro-diasporic and Black expressive modalities. His practice engages with themes of collective memory and speculative futures. He is an Onassis ONX Studio artist member and a current fellow at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

“Moving across research, moving image, installation, sound, textiles and virtual reality, Black Planetarium: Uncharted Anthologies becomes both vessel and constellation: a rehearsal for other worlds, an archive carried by breath and movement. It unfolds as a living call and response, where ancestral memory and improvised performance converge,” said Kidus Hailesilassie. “Simultaneously, it is an active invitation for dialogue between the continent and diaspora communities, offering a platform to collectively engage in re-wordling: using imagination as a method of remembering when historical archives have been distorted and erased. I find both meditation and performance to be forms of public thinking, living archives that bring together moments for community reflection and reconnection.”

The Music Center Presents Black Planetarium: Uncharted Anthologies is the latest public art installation presented by The Music Center’s Digital Innovation Initiative (DII), which was designed to explore and create free digital and virtual reality experiences. DII launched its first exhibit, We ARe Here: A Celebration of Legacy, offering Angelenos the opportunity to learn—through AR and with hands-on artistic experiences in Gloria Molina Grand Park—about the legacies of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities and individuals who have contributed to Los Angeles County’s rich diversity. Additional DII exhibitions have included Our Common Home, which addressed issues of climate change by integrating participants’ live facial expressions and physical movements into digital artworks created in real time and projected on Jerry Moss Plaza’s LED screens; and BLKNWS, an immersive installation by acclaimed L.A. artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph that challenged, inspired and redefined Angelenos’ understanding of news from a Black lens and transformed Jerry Moss Plaza into a garden-themed outdoor oasis.