Signature Talk | "Posing Beauty"

Speaker | Deborah Willis, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University 

The artists in this exhibition are thoughtful and critical about producing images that have been traditionally excluded or overlooked by the art historical canon. Each of the images discussed represents the importance of implementing a radical approach to depicting the complexity and depth of the Black beauty and Black subjectivity in art and culture globally. Moreover, each artist’s distinct articulation reveals narratives that underwrite social constructs, while imbuing the image with a transformative character, and abstract dimension for other imaginaries to emerge. The photographers and artists that Willis will discuss employ the complexity of a gaze that is active as it questions the past and present.