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Effective January 1: Masks are Optional in VisArts’ Classrooms and Studios
Join Storm Bookhard, the 2025 VisArts Emerging Curator, for a virtual lecture and walkthrough of her culminating exhibition, Flip It & Reverse It: Spectacles of Blackness in Popular Media. The presentation will include footage of the gallery installation, clips from the videos on view, and a crash course on the pop culture moments that inspired them.
With works by Cameron A. Granger, Brett Kashmere, Elizabeth “Liz” Mputu, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Martine Syms, Abbey Williams, and X-PRZ, Flip It & Reverse It features a selection of video art from the mid 90s to the present day. The works sample footage and preexisting material from television, social media, and popular music to address how Blackness is constructed in mass media.
The exhibition borrows its title from the hook of Missy Elliott’s 2002 hit single, Work It, nodding to the exhibition’s use of humor and iconic moments in popular culture to propose avenues for Black self-determination.
Bookhard states, “From MTV’s genre-forming reality TV show, The Real World, to the viral coverage of professional athletes endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement, Flip It & Reverse It contends with the fraught economy of pre and post internet spectatorship. The exhibition also explores the racial biases present in emerging technologies and cyberspace. The artists subvert digital mechanisms like the Google Search algorithm and social media comment sections to reckon with the eminent stakes of being seen.”
This program is free and open to the public. It will be held online via Zoom. RSVP below to let us know you’ll be joining us and we’ll email you the Zoom link.
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