Arts and Letters

Arts and Letters will host a conversation moderated by Ciarán Finlayson on the occasion of the reissue of The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism. Roundtable participants Aria Dean, Jamillah James, Christian Nyampeta, Charisse Pearlina Weston, and Andros Zins-Browne will reflect on the positions of Black artists and criticism today.

The new edition of the 1993 publication The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism will be released in December by Dancing Foxes Press with Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and The Brick, marking the 30th anniversary of Arts and Letters member Charles Gaines and Catherine Lord’s exhibition and publication The Theater of Refusal. Coedited by Rhea Anastas, Charles Gaines, Jamillah James, and Eric Golo Stone, The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism reprints in facsimile the eponymous 1993 publication that documented the show; original essays by Gaines, Lord, and Maurice Berger and the transcript of a roundtable conversation among a range of artists and writers confront and build on the exhibition’s revelations. Reproducing images of the exhibition for the first time in color, the new edition augments the original publication with an essay by poet and scholar Fred Moten; recent conversations between Lord and Gaines and between Moten and Gaines; new artists’ statements moderated and edited by Thomas Lax and Jamillah James; and an afterword by Rhea Anastas.

Copies of the publication will be available for purchase. This event is free and open to the public but reservations are required as space is limited. The event will also be live-streamed here.

Aria Dean (b. 1993, Los Angeles, CA) is an artist, writer, and filmmaker based in New York. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally; recent exhibitions include Aria Dean: Abattoir at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2024), Figuer Sucia at Greene Naftali, New York (2023), Abattoir, U.S.A! At the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2023); and Quiet as It’s Kept: Whitney Biennial 2022 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022). Dean is the author of Bad Infinity: Selected Writings (Sternberg Press, 2023).

Ciarán Finlayson is a writer and editor based in New York. He is senior editor at Triple Canopy and the author of Perpetual Slavery (Floating Opera, 2023). His writing has appeared in publications including Archives of American Art Journal, Artforum, Bookforum, Blank Forms, Kunst und Politik, and PARSE, and in catalogues for museums including the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Berlin.

Jamillah James is Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Previously, she was Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) and co-curator (with Margot Norton) of Soft Water Hard Stone, the 2021 New Museum Triennial at the New Museum, New York. She has held curatorial positions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Queens Museum, New York; and independently curated numerous exhibitions and programs at alternative and artist-run spaces throughout the United States and Canada.

Christian Nyampeta (b. 1981, Kigawli, Rwanda) is an artist living in New York from where he organizes programs, exhibitions, screenings, performances, and publications, which are conceived as hosting structures for collective feeling, cooperative thinking, and mutual action. Nyampeta convened the Nyanza Working Group of ARAC—Another Roadmap School which participated in documenta fifteen (2022), and he is the convener of Boda Boda Lounge (2022–24), a trans-African film and video art festival. In New York, Nyampeta convenes the African Film Institute at e-flux in Brooklyn, NY.

Charisse Pearlina Weston (b. 1988, Houston, TX) is a conceptual artist and writer whose work contends with the dynamic interplay of violence and intimacy through repetition, enfoldment, and concealment. Her recent exhibitions include group and solo presentations at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, MOMA PS1, New York, and the Queens Museum, New York, among other venues. Her fellowships and residencies include the Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in-Residence (2022–23); the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2023); and the Hodder Fellowship at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (2023–25).

Andros Zins-Browne (b. 1981, New York, NY) works at the intersection of performance and dance, extending choreographic practice into encounters with dancers, nondancers, singers, objects, and texts. In 2023, he created duel c for the River To River Festival, New York, departing from the Charles Gaines sculpture Moving Chains in a choreography commingling violence, care, and fugitivity. Zins-Browne’s work has been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; the Fondation Galeries Lafayette, Paris; Dia Art Foundation, Bridgehampton, NY; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.