Ekow Eshun | In the Black Fantastic with Kelli Morgan

Join the MIT Press Bookstore and the Art, Culture, Technology Program at MIT to discuss Ekow Eshun’s In the Black Fantastic w/ Kelli Morgan.

A richly illustrated exploration of Black culture at its most wildly imaginative and artistically ambitious, In the Black Fantastic assembles art and imagery from across the African diaspora. Embracing the mythic and the speculative, it recycles and reconfigures elements of fable, folklore, science fiction, spiritual traditions, ceremonial pageantry, and the legacies of Afrofuturism. In works that span photography, painting, sculpture, cinema, graphic arts, music and architecture, In the Black Fantastic shows how speculative fictions in Black art and culture are boldly reimagining perspectives on race, gender and identity.

Ekow Eshun is a writer and curator based in London. Formerly Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, he is the author of Black Gold of the Sun and Africa State of Mind.

Eshun will be in conversation with Kelli Morgan, Professor of the Practice and the inaugural Director of Curatorial Studies at Tufts University. A curator, educator, and social justice activist who specializes in American art and visual culture, her scholarly commitment to the investigation of anti-blackness within those fields has demonstrated how traditional art history and museum practice work specifically to uphold white supremacy.

Christie Neptune, an interdisciplinary artist working across video, photography, sculpture, and performance arts, will introduce the program. A graduate student in the Arts, Culture, and Technology program at MIT, Neptune investigates how constructs of race, gender, and class limit the personal experiences of historically marginalized bodies of color.

Copies of In the Black Fantastic will be available for purchase on site.

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