DUKE UNIVERSITY, Doctoral Research (2024 - present)
Research investigating the creative processes of Black artists utilizing light, sound, video, and film from the 1960s through the 1980s. Project will focus on Black artists residing in North America and Europe, uncovering the network of these creatives and their technology-based art practices while reflecting on potential challenges that hindered the incorporation of such tools. The project’s hypothesis presumes that technological media served as integral tools for Black artists to both explore their identity and re-write patriarchal versions of history; however, the omission of these artists from the canon has resulted in the erasure of their contributions and prevented a precedent for the many Black audiovisual artists of today. If there simply was little to no interested in technology-based media for modern Black artists, then I wish to discover why.
The chronological approach will chart artists from the 1960s, beginning with Tom Lloyd (1929–1996) and his seminal work with The Studio Museum in Harlem. Lloyd passionately worked with local communities, founding Store Front Museum in Queens, NY and mentoring youth through The Studio Museum’s Studio Program. What became of Lloyds’s young apprentices? Did his exhibition Electronic Refractions II and community engagement encourage Black artists to explore technology-based media? In addition to providing a historical picture of Black artists working with light, sound, video, and film, the proposed project aims to uncover these hidden identities, contributing to the roster of media-based artists since the 1960s and highlighting the role of technology-based art practices in exploring themes of identity and history. Theoretical texts around identity and electronic art will accompany an ethnographic approach, including interviews with artists, curators, and art historians for insight into the intersections of technology and self-awareness for black artists. The research proposes that these creative acts were an embodiment of what Langston Hughes defined as a “truly great” artist in The Negro Artists and the Racial Mountain — one who can freely and fully express their blackness, and “who is not afraid to be himself” (Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, 1926).