Black Portraiture[s] will be offering a hybrid option for those who cannot attend in person.

Black Portraiture[s]: Los Angeles: The Black Built Environment will examine the historicity and rich panoply encompassing the Black built environment, both physical and imagined. Exploring the concept and its relationship to photography, architecture, urban planning, and visual culture, artists have reconceived and reconstructed visions of our built environment while exploring themes conversant with the spiritual and ritualistic continuities of the African diaspora. Moreover, this convening will explore the artistic contributions to forms of memory, visual legacies of Black townships, and the charges of conceived spaces therein. The conference will present and encourage research and scholarship on continuities between modern and contemporary visual and structural approaches, centering the audacity of Black-built environments from within the Diaspora’s politics, architecture, art, film, music, migrations, and global iterations.


Co-Hosted by New York University, Getty, and UCLA




IMAGE: BETYE SAAR, GRIS GRIS GUARDIAN, 1990-93.
©BETYESAAR, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND ROBERTS PROJECTS, LOS ANGELES.