We are excited to present the Samella Lewis Initiative for the Study of Black Art's Artist x Writer series. Lewis, a giant in Black American art and art history, was both an artist and writer. This series moves in that spirit, as a way to stage meaningful conversations between cultural workers who advance Black arts globally.
Our fall 2024 conversation is between Krista Franklin (poet and visual artist) and Alexander Ghedi Weheliye (theorist and writer). Franklin’s 2018 work, All I Need is the frontispiece for Weheliye’s latest book Feenin’ which traces R&B music’s continuing centrality in Black life since the late 1970s. This event will be a unique opportunity to hear from two deeply influential thinkers and give an inside glimpse into the often undercover networks of relations, affiliation, and influence in Black cultural production.
Krista Franklin is a writer, performer, and visual artist, the author of Solo(s) (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Too Much Midnight (Haymarket Books, 2020), the artist book Under the Knife (Candor Arts, 2018), and the chapbook Study of Love & Black Body (Willow Books, 2012). She is a recipient of the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her visual art has been exhibited at DePaul Art Museum, Poetry Foundation, Konsthall C, Rootwork Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago Cultural Center, National Museum of Mexican Art, and the set of 20th Century Fox’s Empire. She is published in Poetry, Black Camera, The Offing, Vinyl, and a number ofanthologies and artist books
Alexander Ghedi Weheliye is Malcolm S. Forbes Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and author of Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human and Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity, both also published by Duke University Press.
Location:
The Maroon Culture Club
867 Mt Vernon Ave, Columbus, OH 43203
This event is free and open to the public.
