The artists featured in The Black Index—Dennis Delgado, Alicia Henry, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Titus Kaphar, Whitfield Lovell, and Lava Thomas—build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. Using drawing, performance, printmaking, sculpture, and digital technology to transform the recorded image, these artists question our reliance on photography as a privileged source for documentary objectivity and understanding. Their works offer an alternative practice—a Black index—that still serves as a finding aid for information about Black subjects, but also challenges viewers’ desire for classification.

The works in The Black Index make viewers aware of their own expectations of Black figuration by interrupting traditional epistemologies of portraiture through unexpected and unconventional depictions. These works image the Black body through a conceptual lens that acknowledges the legacy of Black containment that is always present in viewing strategies. The approaches used by Delgado, Henry, Hinkle, Kaphar, Lovell, and Thomas suggest understandings of Blackness and the racial terms of our neo-liberal condition that counter legal and popular interpretations and, in turn, offer a paradigmatic shift within Black visual culture.

Bridget R. Cooks is Associate Professor, Department of African American Studies and the Department of Art History, University of California, Irvine. Exhibition and tour organized by Sarah Watson, Chief Curator, Hunter College Art Galleries, New York in collaboration with the University Art Galleries at UC Irvine, Palo Alto Art Center, and Art Galleries at Black Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

This exhibition is dedicated to David C. Driskell.

 

CAC Gallery Closed (Online Only). Due to COVID-19 campuswide restrictions, the exhibition will not be open to the general public.

Virtual Tour:

Performances:
All performances will be pre-recorded and shared at a later date.

"The Evanesced: Embodied Disappearance [Breonna]"
Performance by Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, exhibiting artist.
CAC Gallery, UC Irvine

"The Antidote Suite"
Peformed by JoVia Armstrong's Eunoia Society 
JoVia Armstrong, percussionist+composer, Ph.D. Program in Integrated Composition, Composition, and Technology, UC Irvine, with Leslie DeShazor-Adams, viola; Elden Kelly, guitar; and Isaiah Sharkey, bass.

"A Death Song" 
Musical Performance by Darryl Taylor, Professor, Department of Music, UC Irvine with Catherine Miller, pianist.
CAC Gallery, UC Irvine

"Meditations on Oya"
Dance Performance by Nola Gibson
Choreography by S. Ama Wray, Professor, Department of Dance, UC Irvine.
CAC Gallery, UC Irvine

Exhibition Catalogue:
The Black Index 
Edited by Bridget R. Cooks and Sarah Watson
Distributed by Hirmer Publishers
Pre-order here.

Visit The Black Index project theblackindex.art