REIMAGINING SUPPRESSED HISTORIES OF RACIAL VIOLENCE
Thursday, Nov. 4, 4:00-5:30 PM
Artist Isaac Julien and art historian Krista Thompson will be speaking about the haunting power of images. Julien will discuss his recent film installation Lessons of the Hour, which reimagines the life of statesman and freed slave Frederick Douglass. Interweaving poetic images of Douglass with his resonating statements on the struggle for freedom, the work asks the viewer to become immersed in a historical re-enactment which is both aesthetically pleasing and psychologically disquieting.
Similarly concerned with how the past can be reassessed, Krista Thompson will address the civil uproar which emerged in Tivoli Gardens (Jamaica) when the police launched an operation to catch fugitive Christopher “Dudus” Coke in May, 2010. Based on photographs and surveillance footage, she will assess how the visual narrative of this violent event culminating in the death of 69 civilians —mostly young black men— ties in with broader cultural, social, and political forces shaping the postcolonial state.
Image: Isaac Julien, The North Star from Lessons of the Hour series, 2019, inkjet photograph. Courtesy of Isaac Julien.