In 2025, communities across the world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cape Verdean independence from Portugal. New Bedford and the greater South Coast area of New England are home to one of the largest and longest-standing Cape Verdean communities outside of Cabo Verde. In marking this occasion, the New Bedford Whaling Museum presents the Contemporary Cape Verdean 2025 project, which explores the Cape Verdean American and Cape Verdean experience through the lens of contemporary art and community storytelling.

The exhibition Claridade: Cape Verdean Identity in Contemporary Art, hosted in the Wattles Family Gallery, weaves together work by contemporary Cape Verdean and Cape Verdean American visual artists and filmmakers. The title of the exhibition is inspired from the Cape Verdean literary review Claridade that ran intermittently from 1936 to 1960. Portuguese for “clarity” or “light,” the publication served as a platform for discussion and analysis around Cape Verdean identity. Working as a space for similar reflections and consideration, the exhibition will include sculpture, fiber arts, mixed media works on paper, paintings, poetry, and video installation and include artists who were born on Cape Verde, those who emigrated to the United States, and those born in the United States and the Netherlands. The works will reflect distinct personal experiences and visual identities of the different artists while also exploring the role of visual art in shaping and affirming cultural identity.