World-renowned curator Adrienne Edwards is set to give a keynote address on Black Abstraction at the next AGO Study Days

“Blackness in abstraction…shifts analysis away from the Black artist as subject and instead emphasizes blackness as material, method and mode, insisting on blackness as a multiplicity.” – Adrienne Edwards

When spoken about, analyzed or depicted, the Black experience has often been homogenized. However, in this time of heightened social responsibility, more people are becoming aware of the complex and diverse individual realities of people of African descent. Black artists who work in abstraction possess an important tool in this respect, creating art that forces viewers to acknowledge uniqueness—both in form and concept.

Exploring the importance of Black Abstraction by analyzing the groundbreaking work of Trinidadian-Canadian artist Denyse Thomasos (1964-2012) will be a feature during the upcoming AGO Study Days, typically held for a small group of curators, researchers, art scholars and students. The program will feature various presenters, and special for this session, a keynote address by Adrienne Edwards, whose presentation will be available for public viewing Wednesday, February 24 at 7pm. Making her first appearance at the AGO (virtually), the world-renowned Whitney Museum Curator of Performance will share insights about abstraction in Black art, which is her focus. 

While Adrienne Edwards’s keynote is a public talk, the rest of the Study Days sessions are invite-only. A recording of all sessions will be made available in the coming weeks. Please contact [email protected] or [email protected] to access the recording. Works by Denyse Thomasos, Julie Mehretu and other Black artists practicing abstraction will be on view at the AGO upon reopening. 

This post is excerpted from AGOinsider. View the full article, here.