Seeking Home: A Conversation with Artists Sadie Barnette, Zalika Azim, and Tyler Mitchell (Virtual Event)

Home is a place of memory and belonging, but it is also a place of migration and instability. Each of these artists' practices illuminate the reimagining of historical narratives as a means of interrogating colonial landscapes, family history, repression, and resistance, whether it be in an effort to understand or expand possibilities, or explore a new aesthetic of Blackness. We are so excited to have these three artists join us, first by presenting their work and then in conversation to explore the ways in which the very notion of seeking home is problematized. There will also be time for audience Q&A.

This event is part of our year-long exploration on the theme of “Home, What does it look like now?” Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, state sanctioned violence against black bodies, the CBVC will explore the significant ways black visual narratives respond to the dynamic cultural, political, social, economic and intimate changes that have forced us to (re)interrogate previous conceptions of blackness and home. Within the context of Covid-19, home is both comfort and host to multiple modalities of black disruption and displacement. The crisis has brought into sharp relief the ways in which familial and cultural ties of black diaspora are troubled and forced to morph when geographical borders once bridged through the relative ease of travel, are suddenly restricted. The theme provides a framework that enables us to both reflect and imagine. For example, how do we sustain our connectivity by fueling the diasporic imaginary? These are some of the questions we are exploring in the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 season, along with the concept of Black Joy in Resistance.

Hosted by the CBVC at the Institute of African American Affairs and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU; the 370J Project; and the Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.