Collage is uniquely suited for exploring the complexities of Black identity. With its varied and layered elements—often an assortment of disparate found objects—a collage is a sum of parts that transcends those parts, much like an individual whose history is defined by diaspora. “Collage offered me the opportunity to break up this monolithic idea of Blackness,” the artist Deborah Roberts, one of 49 artists featured in “Multiplicity,” said during a conversation with the Brooklyn Rail. In her 2018 work Let Them Be Children, for instance, Roberts pieces together magazine and internet clippings to form childlike “hybrid figures,” suggesting the racist double standards that threaten the safety of Black youth in America. The nearly 60 pieces featured in “Multiplicity” offer poignant expressions of human experience, creating a realm of shared history, memory, and beauty. Among the 49 artists in the show are Sanford Biggers, Wangechi Mutu, Howardena Pindell, and Shinique Smith. —Nyla Gilstrap