Black: The Chromapolitics of Darkness, Shadow, and Light/Life

"Chromapolitics" challenges us to consider color as neither arbitrary nor neutral, but instead deeply enmeshed in powerful social and cultural dynamics. Structured around creative and collaborative student responses to the work of Black, Latinx and Indigenous artists and thinkers this seminar asks students to reexamine their own use and understanding of color by focusing on the resonances and intensities of the color black and adjacent dark tonalities such as browns, blues, and violets, as well as how shadow, night, and negative space register both in the work of artists and theorists of visual culture and in their experience as makers.