J. Faith (Kapwa) Almiron

The Design Share Party is a monthly gathering where we invite Artists and people concerned with Art to come share their work and inspiration.

This month (Wed 16 Oct) we hear from Dr. Johanna Almiron-Johnson and Sindiso "Riot" Nyoni.

Dr. Johanna F. Almiron-Johnson presents her research on Jean-Michel Basquiat, a prolific visual and performance artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent who emerged as an iconoclast during New York City’s art boom in the late nineteen-seventies and eighties. Pivoting away from popular media’s tendency to mythologize Basquiat’s celebrity allure or to discuss the artwork’s value solely as an art market commodity, Dr. Almiron-Johnson analyzes thematic symbols and narratives in Basquiat’s paintings through the lens of social history and cultural politics, paying particular attention to his treatment of topics like race and social inequality. Dr. Almiron-Johnson argues that Basquiat’s legacy persists due to the artwork’s ability to visually represent the historical memory of these experiences; moreover, it also acts as a meta-commentary on how such social catastrophes are rendered visible or invisible in the larger cultural sphere. She received her doctorate in American Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (2013) with specialties in visual culture and Black cultural studies and her Master’s degree in performance studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem " We Wear The Mask, " (1896) this inter-disciplinary course examines how race is constructed through representations in art, art history, museums, popular culture (film) and popular media (television). As a means to gain media literacy, students will learn how to recognize and analyze racial stereotypes in relation to the concepts of social inequality and white privilege. While there is an emphasis on racial representations, the course will also examine intersections with gender, sexuality and class. This course will examine how contemporary artists have engaged these stereotypes as a means to reproduce alternative visual representations of history, culture and race. (Cross-list with Ethnic Studies programs, Media/Communication Arts) With a focus on the cultural production of the 20 th and 21 st century, this inter-disciplinary course examines how the visual informs the construction of race, gender and sexuality within social and historical contexts. Students will study Black visual culture through the historical origins of world fair displays and museums (bodies and art objects as ethnographic study), fashion (dress, style, culturally-coded representation, photography), popular culture and mainstream entertainment (film, television) to policy, social protest and cultural movements. How do Black artists and curators engage, challenge and/or appropriate these visual representations? How do these cultural practitioners create counter-narratives against stereotyping and seek to produce alternative imagery? How do Black artists negotiate the subjective binaries of masculinity/femininity, straight/gay identities and further offer queer and transgender frameworks to understand race, culture and society? (Cross-list with Women Studies, Art History)

Course Description What are the poetics of revolution? How does rebellion express itself differently in the streets, on the screen and within civic institutions? And what is the emergent role of artists in the-times-they-area -changing? Applying social movement theory, this inter-disciplinary course examines the intersection of art and politics through the visual and performative strategies at work in social protest in public and private spheres. Organized thematically across transnational and temporal boundaries, protest art becomes the guide through this anti-history of the contemporary world. By reviewing transnational history through progressive social movements, cultural crisis and creative production, the course unsettles the over-determined history written by the victors of war. The transgression against linear conceptions of history generates more radicalized conceptions of historical agency. In other words, by de-centering an otherwise Eurocentric hegemonic trajectory, overlooked actors of an internationalist history such as people representing the underdog are brought to the fore-namely the poor and working class, people of color, women, queer folk and people with disability. Marginalized histories of political resistance that have been writ out of mainstream narratives are reenacted into existence through our analysis. These histories include multi-racial and class-based coalitions and grassroots victories against state and structural violence. We examine small to large direct action protest tactics and how community based organizations articulate its social vision and ideology through the performance of protest. We study the embodiment of social movement knowledges through the visual construction and representation of critical mass identities and iconoclast martyrs. In addition to studying how moments of protest impact art production, we will also examine how they have been represented through art, literature, visual culture, media (film and television) and performance (music, theatre). We will engage and experiment with the new forms of protest and knowledge production in digital humanities and consider how the DIY approach to organic intellectualism and social organization manifest through new media and tomorrow's new day. NB: As a seminar, students should be prepared to participate in depth discussion on a weekly basis by completing the reading and viewing assignments. Since the subject matter of art is intrinsically visual and since Art Politics studies is an inter-disciplinary field, there is a strong multi-media element in the course. Students will be expected to view films regularly both online and in-class. Students are also strongly encouraged to attend outside exhibitions and performances for extra credit.

"Now's the time : a study of the social statements in the art of Basquiat" explores the social and cultural significance of the visual artwork and performance of Jean-Michel Basquiat. This research analyzes the convergence of aesthetic, literary, theoretical, and ideological dialogics within Basquiat's artwork alongside contemporary cultural politics, social discourse, and history. My research grounds the aesthetic and cultural significance of Basquiat's artwork in the context of his time, examining how his social statements reflected historical contingency of his raced, classed, and gendered position. Although scholars have addressed many dimensions of Basquiat's artwork in chapter or essay form, this will be amongst the first comprehensive studies of the artistic and social relevance of Basquiat's artwork using a cultural studies interdisciplinary framework. I begin by exploring the rich artistic and aesthetic facets of the artwork and then progress into cultural inquiry, paying special attention to the political import of Basquiat's visual allusions and literary references.