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March 30, 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3917,"parent":0,"menu_order":42,"template":"","categories":[17,130],"tags":[45],"department":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3482","1":"exhibitions","2":"type-exhibitions","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"category-exhibitions","7":"category-past-exhibitions","8":"tag-past","9":"project-type-exhibitions"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ballast: Recent Aesthetic Practices in Response to Anti-Blackness - UCR ARTS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ballast presents\u00a0recent work by artists E. Chris Brady, Boz Deseo Garden, Tarik Garrett, Keko Jackson, Acacia Marable, LaRissa Rogers, and Zenobia, collectively from MFA programs at UCR, UCI, and UCLA. The exhibition centers\u00a0the critical framework known as Afro-Pessimism and presents aesthetic practices that engage the paradigm of anti-Blackness across and beyond historical and contemporary social contexts. By critically examining dominant cultural narratives and institutions, centering the experiences of Black subjects, engaging with the materiality of anti-Blackness, and challenging dominant notions of the &quot;Human,&quot; these artists engage Afro-Pessimism&#039;s interventions both explicitly and implicitly across diverse practices and mediums.\u00a0As critical and urgent as this framework is, the works are not limited to this political engagement. They are aesthetically complex and compelling, drawing us in to directly confront uncomfortable realities.Theorists of Afro-Pessimism hold that despite alleged advances or emancipations, the social, political, legal, and economic grammars of the Transatlantic slave trade remain globally foundational. As a consequence, Black bodies remain, in the &quot;afterlife of slavery\u201d as Saidiya Hartman terms it, objects of property that are beneath, beyond, and banished from the legal protections, social rewards, and psychological coherences afforded to the Human (which is always presumed to be White). Social death finds itself continuously imposed upon the social life of Blackness. Formative thinkers in the tradition of Afro-Pessimism include Frank B. Wilderson III, Selamawit Terrefe, and Jared\u00a0Sexton\u2014among many others\u2014though the lines of thought can be traced back to the mid-20th\u00a0century texts of Frantz Fanon.Through lost and suppressed names, places, stories, and strategies, the works on view link together the present and historical conditions of Black people in the U.S., drawing attention to the dynamics of exclusion, fetishization, and burdensome inclusion that define contemporary expressions of anti-Blackness.\u00a0While this unique group exhibition\u00a0focuses on the critical dialogue around Afro-Pessimism, it merely follows a growing need to make visible the imperative work of a new generation of artists speaking to the entrenched anti-Black violence we still find in the everyday of civil society.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ballast: Recent Aesthetic Practices in Response to Anti-Blackness - UCR ARTS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ballast presents\u00a0recent work by artists E. Chris Brady, Boz Deseo Garden, Tarik Garrett, Keko Jackson, Acacia Marable, LaRissa Rogers, and Zenobia, collectively from MFA programs at UCR, UCI, and UCLA. The exhibition centers\u00a0the critical framework known as Afro-Pessimism and presents aesthetic practices that engage the paradigm of anti-Blackness across and beyond historical and contemporary social contexts. By critically examining dominant cultural narratives and institutions, centering the experiences of Black subjects, engaging with the materiality of anti-Blackness, and challenging dominant notions of the &quot;Human,&quot; these artists engage Afro-Pessimism&#039;s interventions both explicitly and implicitly across diverse practices and mediums.\u00a0As critical and urgent as this framework is, the works are not limited to this political engagement. They are aesthetically complex and compelling, drawing us in to directly confront uncomfortable realities.Theorists of Afro-Pessimism hold that despite alleged advances or emancipations, the social, political, legal, and economic grammars of the Transatlantic slave trade remain globally foundational. As a consequence, Black bodies remain, in the &quot;afterlife of slavery\u201d as Saidiya Hartman terms it, objects of property that are beneath, beyond, and banished from the legal protections, social rewards, and psychological coherences afforded to the Human (which is always presumed to be White). Social death finds itself continuously imposed upon the social life of Blackness. Formative thinkers in the tradition of Afro-Pessimism include Frank B. 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Chris Brady, Boz Deseo Garden, Tarik Garrett, Keko Jackson, Acacia Marable, LaRissa Rogers, and Zenobia, collectively from MFA programs at UCR, UCI, and UCLA. The exhibition centers\u00a0the critical framework known as Afro-Pessimism and presents aesthetic practices that engage the paradigm of anti-Blackness across and beyond historical and contemporary social contexts. By critically examining dominant cultural narratives and institutions, centering the experiences of Black subjects, engaging with the materiality of anti-Blackness, and challenging dominant notions of the \"Human,\" these artists engage Afro-Pessimism's interventions both explicitly and implicitly across diverse practices and mediums.\u00a0As critical and urgent as this framework is, the works are not limited to this political engagement. They are aesthetically complex and compelling, drawing us in to directly confront uncomfortable realities.Theorists of Afro-Pessimism hold that despite alleged advances or emancipations, the social, political, legal, and economic grammars of the Transatlantic slave trade remain globally foundational. As a consequence, Black bodies remain, in the \"afterlife of slavery\u201d as Saidiya Hartman terms it, objects of property that are beneath, beyond, and banished from the legal protections, social rewards, and psychological coherences afforded to the Human (which is always presumed to be White). Social death finds itself continuously imposed upon the social life of Blackness. Formative thinkers in the tradition of Afro-Pessimism include Frank B. Wilderson III, Selamawit Terrefe, and Jared\u00a0Sexton\u2014among many others\u2014though the lines of thought can be traced back to the mid-20th\u00a0century texts of Frantz Fanon.Through lost and suppressed names, places, stories, and strategies, the works on view link together the present and historical conditions of Black people in the U.S., drawing attention to the dynamics of exclusion, fetishization, and burdensome inclusion that define contemporary expressions of anti-Blackness.\u00a0While this unique group exhibition\u00a0focuses on the critical dialogue around Afro-Pessimism, it merely follows a growing need to make visible the imperative work of a new generation of artists speaking to the entrenched anti-Black violence we still find in the everyday of civil society.","og_url":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/","og_site_name":"UCR ARTS","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ucrarts","article_modified_time":"2024-10-01T19:06:31+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1600,"height":900,"url":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/ballast-web.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_site":"@ucrarts","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/","url":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/","name":"Ballast: Recent Aesthetic Practices in Response to Anti-Blackness - UCR ARTS","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/ballast-web.jpg","datePublished":"2023-06-02T21:05:33+00:00","dateModified":"2024-10-01T19:06:31+00:00","description":"Ballast presents\u00a0recent work by artists E. Chris Brady, Boz Deseo Garden, Tarik Garrett, Keko Jackson, Acacia Marable, LaRissa Rogers, and Zenobia, collectively from MFA programs at UCR, UCI, and UCLA. The exhibition centers\u00a0the critical framework known as Afro-Pessimism and presents aesthetic practices that engage the paradigm of anti-Blackness across and beyond historical and contemporary social contexts. By critically examining dominant cultural narratives and institutions, centering the experiences of Black subjects, engaging with the materiality of anti-Blackness, and challenging dominant notions of the \"Human,\" these artists engage Afro-Pessimism's interventions both explicitly and implicitly across diverse practices and mediums.\u00a0As critical and urgent as this framework is, the works are not limited to this political engagement. They are aesthetically complex and compelling, drawing us in to directly confront uncomfortable realities.Theorists of Afro-Pessimism hold that despite alleged advances or emancipations, the social, political, legal, and economic grammars of the Transatlantic slave trade remain globally foundational. As a consequence, Black bodies remain, in the \"afterlife of slavery\u201d as Saidiya Hartman terms it, objects of property that are beneath, beyond, and banished from the legal protections, social rewards, and psychological coherences afforded to the Human (which is always presumed to be White). Social death finds itself continuously imposed upon the social life of Blackness. Formative thinkers in the tradition of Afro-Pessimism include Frank B. Wilderson III, Selamawit Terrefe, and Jared\u00a0Sexton\u2014among many others\u2014though the lines of thought can be traced back to the mid-20th\u00a0century texts of Frantz Fanon.Through lost and suppressed names, places, stories, and strategies, the works on view link together the present and historical conditions of Black people in the U.S., drawing attention to the dynamics of exclusion, fetishization, and burdensome inclusion that define contemporary expressions of anti-Blackness.\u00a0While this unique group exhibition\u00a0focuses on the critical dialogue around Afro-Pessimism, it merely follows a growing need to make visible the imperative work of a new generation of artists speaking to the entrenched anti-Black violence we still find in the everyday of civil society.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/ballast-web.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/ballast-web.jpg","width":1600,"height":900},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/ballast\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Exhibitions","item":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/exhibitions\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Ballast: Recent Aesthetic Practices in Response to Anti-Blackness"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/#website","url":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/","name":"UCR ARTS","description":"UCR ARTS brings together the California Museum of Photography (1973) and the Barbara &amp; Art Culver Center of the Arts (2010) located in downtown Riverside, California.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions\/3482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibitions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3482"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucrarts.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=3482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}