Abstract: The Samella Lewis Initiative for the Study of Black Art invites you to its inaugural Artist X Writer talks. This conversation is between artist and journalist Wesaam Al-Badry and Benjamin L. Jones, Provost’s Fellow in the History of Art Department. Jones writes about Al-Badry as an Iraqi refugee who is a student of the Black radical aesthetic tradition.
Bio:
Wesaam Al-Badry is an investigative journalist and interdisciplinary artist working in photography, video installation, sculpture, and painting through interconnected themes of identity, migration, simulated wars, and the archives. His current projects investigate how image-based processes and texts are complicit in using racialized ethnographic studies in Iraq. Al-Badry has worked for global media outlets, including CNN and Al-Jazeera America. His photographs have been featured in the New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Atlantic, NPR, Fortune, The Nation, and Mother Jones. His artwork has been exhibited internationally at museums including the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City, Bernstein Gallery at Princeton University, and Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
Image: “Hermes #VIII,” Archival Pigment Print, 2018
