Black Portraiture[s] IV: The Color of Silence

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BLACK PORTRAITURE[S] IV: The Color of Silence is the eighth conference in a series of conversations about imaging the black body. We invite artists, activists, and scholars to reflect on the visual expressions of national imaginaries and political ideologies that negate racial differences and render black subjects invisible. Such ideologies are prevalent in Latin America and the Caribbean, where metaphors of mixture (mestizaje or mestiçagem) and racial harmony ignore inequality and discrimination. Similar formulations are to be found elsewhere, however, as in republican France, or among proponents of a post-racial United States, or in references to a South African “rainbow nation”, or in Jamaica’s well-known “out of many, one people” motto. Presenters will engage a range of historical and contemporary topics such as biennales, exhibitions, movements, individual artists and collectives, art markets, politics, tourism, sites of memory, Afrofuturism, fashion, dance, music, film, art, and photography.

Black Portraitures IV: The Color of Silence will take place fifteen years after we convened an initial colloquium at Harvard on African American art. Then, we were interested in formalizing a discipline. Now, that discipline is thriving, and that first colloquium has grown over the years into the international conference series, Black Portraitures, attracting hundreds of scholars, artists, and activists from around the world. We look forward to reconvening in Cambridge to continue the conversation.

SCHEDULE

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Harvard Art Museums | 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

6pm: Keynote address

7:30pm: Welcome reception

Friday, March 23, 2018

Location TBA

9am-5pm: Panel Discussions

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Harvard Art Museums | 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

9am-5pm: Panel Discussions