The Physics of Black Art Or, Must Blackness Be Visible?

In the talk, Michelle M. Wright touches on some of the issues addressed in the exhibition “Seven Rooms and a Garden: Rashid Johnson and the Moderna Museet Collection”. Beginning with the twinned concept of history and race, Michelle M. Wright takes us through philosophy, geography, theoretical particle physics and visual arts, to ultimately answer the question of whether Blackness has to be visible in art.

The talk is facilitated by John-Paul Zaccarini, professor of performing arts and bodily and vocal practices, and head of the research project FutureBrownSpace at the Stockholm University of the Arts.

The lecture is a collaboration with FutureBrownSpace and the Stockholm University of the Arts.

Michelle M. Wright

Michelle M. Wright is the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, where she teaches courses in African American and Black European literary traditions, as well as seminars on theorizing race and belonging in Black and African Diaspora Studies.

She is the author of “Becoming Black: creating identity in the African diaspora” (2004) and “Physics of Blackness: beyond the Middle Passage epistemology” (2015), and is currently at work on a new project, tentatively titled “Afroeuropolis and the Agency of Space”, which looks at how Black writers from across the Diaspora imagine the space of Western Europe.