The Wakanda Effect
06.28.18 / 7pm
Black Panther + The Black Radical Imaginary
Using the blockbuster movie Black Panther as a starting point, this conversation will consider the trajectory of black radical thought, activism and the black political imagination as it has evolved since the 1960s. This conversation will be moderated by Hamza Walker, and will feature Edgar Arceneaux, Funmilola Fagbamila, and Shana Redmond.
Edgar Arceneaux (b. 1972, Los Angeles) is an artist working in the media of drawing, sculpture, and performance, whose works often explore connections between historical events and present-day truths. He played a seminal role in the creation of the Watts House Project, a redevelopment initiative to remodel a series of houses around the Watts Towers, serving as director from 1999 to 2012. His work has been featured at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Performa 15, New York; and the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, among other venues. Arceneaux is also an Associate Professor of Art for Roski School of Art and Design at USC; he lives and works in Pasadena, California.
Funmilola Fagbamila is a Nigerian American scholar, activist, playwright and artist. She currently serves as an adjunct professor of Pan African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. As an original member of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Funmilola has been organizing with BLM since its inception in 2013.
Shana Redmond is a professor of musicology in the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and an expert on the intersections of music, race and politics. Redmond’s focus has been to understand the ways in which music is used as a strategy within the liberation politics and social movements of the African world. In her research and teaching Redmond also addresses racial formation, political cultures, nationalism, labor and decolonization.
Hamza Walker is the Director of LAXART, an independent nonprofit art space in Los Angeles. From 1994–2016, he was the Director of Education and Associate Curator at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, a non-collecting museum devoted to contemporary art. In 2017 he co-curated (with Catherin Taft) Reconstitution, a group exhibition mounted at LAXART. In 2016 he co-curated (with Aram Moshayedi) Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, and in 2015 he curated A Painting is a Painting isn’t a Painting at the Kadist Foundation in San Francisco.
All events are first come, first serve until we reach capacity. We recommend an early arrival and ride share when possible. This project is supported in part through a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs and through the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts.