A Reprise

My work is engaged in predominately archival research related to the relationship between Western economics, the history of black modernism, and the historically consequential abstraction of black and African culture. I have understood this abstraction as a global radical transgression essential to black aesthetics.

I'm working on an artist book that features a body of work titled “A Reprise.” The body of work uses images pulled from American and European institutional archives as source material for photographs that are completely new but borrow from the context and materiality of the originals. The work investigates the overlap between the colonial institutionalization of African antiquity and the evolution of American and European modernism in both the visual and performing arts.

Students can benefit from this project by learning strategies for grappling with politicized archival research. This project will allow students to push the boundaries of documentary and archival practices. The students can also benefit from seeing the book publishing process from the point of view of a visual artist, an archivist, and a documentarian. The project will also conclude with an exhibition in New York in the spring.