Events & Calendars "Staging Blackqueer Lives in Anti-Black Queer Times: Visual Possibilities, Poetics and Resistance in/through Collage"

In “Staging Blackqueer Lives in Anti-Black Queer Times: Visual Possibilities, Poetics and Resistance in/through Collage,” Dr. Durell M. Callier, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University, offers an analysis of Black and queer quotidian practices and artistic practices within the area of collage and visual. Fundamentally, the question of how Black and queer people are seen, remembered and honored, their lives held sacred or not within our society, is explored. To answer this question, attention is given to the ways Black communities perform embodied, visual, sonic, resistances and representations of themselves and their lives which envision anew freedom, pleasure and Black life beyond structural forces of confinement and degradation. Based in part on two mixed-media art installations, disclosure (2015) and Staging Blackqueer Possibilities (2018), this talk examines Callier's exploration into manifesting these possibilities through creating collages, reflecting upon the visual and thus spatial interventions which are made possible through critical engagements with visual art and performance.

Sponsored by the Center for Community Engagement and the Amherst College Education Studies Initiative