Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture
Curated by Contemporary Arts Center’s Resident Curator, Shana M. griffin, Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture explores the production of Black visual culture, bringing attention to the ways contemporary photographers and visual artists regularly wield the power of the camera and their creative practices to discern, behold, celebrate, and document people, places, events, collective memories, encounters, and other ever-present moments of Blackness that refuse the violence of erasure and subjectivity.
In the introduction of Listening to Images, Black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art Tina M. Campt states: “For blacks in the diaspora, both quiet and quotidian are mobilized as everyday practices of refusal.” Such gestures of refusal, which are neither passive nor restrained, are regularly exercised and creatively engaged by Black photographers and visual artists, who challenge everyday forms of violence, subjectivity, and erasure through the lens of their camera and creative practices.
From the invisible to the obvious, the mundane to the spectacular, the overlooked to the known, the erased, and to the remembered—the works in the exhibition engage multiple aesthetics of Black visuality.
In Art on My Mind: Visual Politics, bell hooks notes, “Though rarely articulated as such, the camera became in black life a political instrument, a way to resist misrepresentation as well as a means by which alternative images could be produced.” As an exercise in the unconventional and the splendid, Gestures of Refusal is no ordinary exhibition or investigates how we experience and render Blackness visible. Featuring the work of more than one hundred contemporary Black artists with ties to New Orleans, five immersive installations, and over two hundred art objects, this exhibition explores a range of photographic frequencies, styles, tenses, punctuation, and rhythmic scores, creating new visual vocabularies for futurity.
The opening reception of Gestures of Refusal is Saturday, January 6, 2024, from 6 – 10 pm. The exhibition will be on view at the Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp Street, until April 29, 2024, from Wednesdays to Mondays, 11 am – 5 pm.
Featured Artists
Abdul Aziz
Adrien Broussard
Ashley Lorraine
Benicia King
Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes
Bruce Williams
Bryan Berteaux
Bryan Hithe
Carla Williams
Cecelia Fernandes
Cedric A. Ellsworth
Chandra McCormick
Chanelle Harris
Charlene Legaux Richard
Christine “CFreedom” Brown
Clifton J. Faust
Corey Anthony
danielle c. miles
Danette M. Vincent
Dawnie Marie
Dean Gage
Delaney George
Durado Brooks
Dwight Harris
Ellis Marsalis III
Epaul Julien
Eric Waters
Felicita Felli Maynard
Freddye Hill
Gason Ayisyin
Giani Jones
Gillian Maris Jones
Girard Mouton,III
Gus Bennett
Harold Baquet
Heidi Hickman
Irving Johnson, III
J Nash Porter
J.R. Thomason
Jacques Detiege
Jafar M. Pierre
Jamal Denzel Barnes
Jason R. A. Foster
Jeremy Tauriac
Jeri Hilt
Jose Cotto
Jourdan Barnes
Keith Calhoun
Kevin Jones
Kewon Hunter
L. Kasimu Harris
Larry Everage
Larry Songy
Leslie-Claire Spillman
Lidya Araya
Lindsey Smith Hall
Lloyd Dennis
Lloyd J. Medley, Jr.
Malcolm Johnson
Malik Baloney
Malik Bartholomew
Malik Williams
Marion J. Porter
Maurice Martinez
Melissa Carrier
Monique Moss
Morris Jones, Jr.
Najah Mushatt
Nicholas Anderson Hall
Nikki Brown
Norman R. Smith
Nyejah Bolds
Othello Carter
Peter G. Forest
Peter Nakhid
PRO$PER JONE$
Quinn Gordon
Remy “Blessed the Freaks” Williams
Renee Royale
Ric Francis
Richard V. Keller, Sr.
Rita Harper
Roland Guerin
Saddi Khali
Sekou Fela
Shabez Jamal
Shana M. griffin
Shaquille Dunbar
Sienna Pinderhughes
Sokari Ekine
Sophia Little
Sorena Briley
Selwhyn “Polo Silk” Terrell
Taylor Hunter
Ted Quant
Terri Mimms
Tod Smith
Trenity Thomas
Vincent Simmons
Will Horton
Curatorial Assistants:
DiQuan Forcell
Renee Royale
Cuartoral Support Team
Anne Smith Collins
Gus Bennett
L. Kasimu Harris
Beryl F. Hunter
Felicita Felli Maynard
Jas Rogers
Selwhyn “Polo Silk” Terrell
SEEING BLACK Team
Shana M. griffin
Girard Mouton,III
Kalamu ya Salaam
Eric Waters
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Works in Gestures of Refusal are courtesy of the exhibiting artists and from the collections of the Amistad Research Center, Tex Stevens Collection, New Orleans Public Library, Xavier University of Louisiana Digital Archives and Collections, the Historic New Orleans Collection, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate Archives, and the Louisiana Public Broadcasting for PBS Digital Studios and Houston Public Media.
Gestures of Refusal is the third in a series of exhibitions organized by SEEING BLACK. First Frame, the preludial exhibition of SEEING BLACK: Black Photography in New Orleans 1840 & Beyond, was on view at the New Orleans African American Museum from October 6, 2022, to June 4, 2023. The second exhibition, In the Spirit of Black, was on view at the Ashé Culture Arts Center and Ashé Power House Theater from March 30 to June 4, 2023. The final exhibition of the four-part series will open in the spring of 2024 at Xavier University of Louisiana Art Gallery.
About the Curator
Shana M. griffin is a New Orleans–based Black feminist activist, independent researcher, sociologist, abolitionist, and artist. griffin’s practice is interdisciplinary, research-based, and decolonial, centering the experiences of Black women most vulnerable to the violence of poverty, incarceration, polluted environments, reproductive regulation, economic exploitation, housing discrimination, and climate change. She is a 2022 Andy Warhol Curatorial Research Fellow, 2022 New Orleans Center for the Gulf South Monroe Fellow, 2021 Creative Capital Awardee, and 2020-21 John O’Neal Cultural Arts Fellow. She holds a Master of Arts in Sociology, a Bachelor of Arts in History, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology.
About SEEING BLACK
SEEING BLACK is a multimedia, research-based project photography project organized by writer and activist Kalamu ya Salaam, feminist activist, researcher, and artist Shana M. griffin, photographer and historian Girard Mouton,III, and photographer Eric Waters, with design support from Lidya Araya and the curatorial assistance of Renee Royale, alongside input from photographers, scholars, designers, artists, writers, and partnering organizations.
SEEING BLACK’s Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, is made possible through major support from an anonymous friend of the CAC, with the additional support of MK Wegmann, Shelby and Susan Russ, Eileen Silvers and Richard Bronstein, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, Ella West Freeman Foundation, Keller Family Foundation, and Besthoff Family Foundation. Special thanks to Lidya Araya, Vincent Barraza, Lisa Moore, Michelle Coffey, Josh Casimier, Mia Bailey, Alissa Pivaral, Brenda Marie Osbey, Brice White, Dale Gunnoe, Ruben Rodriguez, Cameron Wood, Jennifer Ward, and Staff and Board of Trustees of the CAC.
Works in Gestures of Refusal are courtesy of the exhibiting artists and from the collections of the Amistad Research Center, Tex Stevens Collection, the New Orleans Public Library, Xavier University of Louisiana Digital Archives and Collections, the Historic New Orleans Collection, and The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate Archives, and the Louisiana Public Broadcasting for PBS Digital Studios and Houston Public Media.The exhibition is supported in part by community partners, including Antenna, Art Conscious, Mr. Wolf Espresso, Paper Machine, PATOIS, PUNCTUATE, and Vizual.