In conjunction with Coleman Collins’ solo exhibition Latent Space, Boz Garden and Harrison K. Smith from the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery will lead an open conversation to unpack some of the exhibition’s important gestures, and consider our understanding of Blackness, the Human, the image of thought, and how we discuss the afterlives of Atlantic slavery. To enrich the discussion, two texts will be distributed beforehand—Chapter 5 of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks and an excerpt from Teju Cole's Tremor—that participants are invited to read and weave into the conversation.

The discussion will be from 6-7pm, and participants are encouraged to arrive at 5:30pm to view Collins’ exhibiting film beforehand.

The accompanying texts can be found here:
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, 1952
Teju Cole, Tremor, 2023

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Boz Deseo Garden is an artist and doctoral student in the Culture & Theory Program at UC Irvine. Their research focuses on the social and intellectual histories of Atlantic slavery’s (non)appearance in art criticism, practice and aesthetic theory from the 19th century to the contemporary. They are the founder and Co-Director of the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery in Los Angeles, an initiative dedicated to the stewardship and production of research across the tapestry of Slavery Studies, Afropessimism, and Black Studies.

Harrison Kinnane Smith is an artist based in Los Angeles. His collaborative work and site-specific interventions critique public institutions and financial systems. Smith is a Co-Founder of PlaceHolder Gallery, LA and Affiliated Faculty and Co-Director of the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery. He holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.