Virtual Program, Recorded 7.15.21.
Explore themes of self-revelation, craft, and legacy with filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison and Black Flyyy exhibition curator Anita N. Bateman, PhD. Nahli's experimental documentary Dreaming Gave Us Wings (duration 5:53 min.) will be screened as part of a discussion with Nahli and Bateman on centering Black narratives and challenging white cultural hegemony.
Dreaming Gave Us Wings, 2019
Created by Sophia Nahli Allison
5:53 minutes
Sophia Nahli Allison is an Academy Award® nominated filmmaker and artist. As a black queer radical dreamer she reimagines the archives by excavating hidden truths. A meditation of the spirit, her work conjures ancestral memories to explore the intersection of fiction and non-fiction storytelling. She was a 2020 United States Artists Fellow. She is currently working on her first feature, breathing, and levitating.
Anita N. Bateman is an independent curator and art historian who specializes in modern and contemporary African art and the art of the African diaspora with additional interests in the history of photography, Black feminism, and the role of social media in activism and contemporary art. Bateman earned a Ph.D. in Art History & Visual Culture and a Graduate Certificate in African and African American Studies from Duke University, an M.A. in Art History from Duke University, and a B.A. in Art History cum laude from Williams College. She has held curatorial positions at the RISD Museum, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Nasher Museum of Art. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. Bateman is the curator of Defying the Shadow and Black Flyyy currently on view at RISD Museum.
Image: Sophia Nahli Allison, New Galaxies from the self-portrait series Dreaming Gave Us Wings, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.