Black/Queer/Abstract: A convening on the occasion of Julie Mehretu

Kenneth C. Griffin Hall

Inspired by Julie Mehretu’s multidisciplinary practice and guided by her interests, this day-long convening gathers together artists and thinkers across disciplines whose work engages with Black and Queer radical thought through forms of abstraction. The event seeks to mobilize the power of imaginative thinking and to celebrate a collective project of world building.

Bridging the arts, humanities, and sciences, the program presents broad conversations between artists and scholars who are at the forefront of their fields and who form a creative network with which Mehretu’s work is in dialogue.

10 am
Julie Mehretu exhibition viewing

11 am
Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director
Natalie Diaz, poet

11:15 am
Abstraction and Black Modernism:
Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs
Julie Mehretu, artist
Steven Nelson, art historian and dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA)
Martin Puryear, artist

12:15 pm
Digital Subjectivities:
American Artist, artist
Kevin Beasley, artist
Legacy Russell, associate curator of exhibitions, Studio Museum in Harlem

1 pm
Lunch and Julie Mehretu exhibition viewing

2 pm
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, poet and associate professor of literatures in English, Cornell University

2:15 pm
Senses + Subjectivities:
Kodwo Eshun, writer and filmmaker
Robin Coste Lewis, poet
Fumi Okiji, assistant professor of rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley
Charles Zuker, professor of biochemistry & molecular biophysics & neuroscience, principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute

3:15 pm
Coffee break

3:30 pm
Bianca Jones Marlin, Herbert and Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Cell Research and the principal investigator of the Marlin Lab at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute

4 pm
Exodus:
Lawrence Chua, associate professor of architecture, Syracuse University
Julie Mehretu, artist
Paul Pfeiffer, artist

4:45 pm
Tracy K. Smith, poet

The event can also be accessed virtually. Register for Livestream.