Black Portraitures: Shifting Paradigms

Venice, Italy, 2024
Titus Kaphar 
Shifting the Gaze, 2017
© Titus Kaphar. Photo: Christopher Gardner. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
Titus Kaphar 
Shifting the Gaze, 2017
© Titus Kaphar. Photo: Christopher Gardner. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.

The 14th iteration of Black Portraitures (BP) will take place over two days during the vernissage of the 60th Anniversary of the Venice Biennale. This year’s theme, Shifting Paradigms, will center thought leaders from Africa and the African Diaspora who are creating new models for the education, cultivation, exhibition, dissemination, and collection of art and images. The aim of the conference aligns well with the Venice Biennale’s theme, Foreigner’s Everywhere. Panelists will include a transnational list of artists, curators, art historians, writers, educators, collectors, gallerists, architects, and designers who use the experience of Blackness to facilitate new systems of knowledge within the field of art and storytelling. This version of BP will break new ground in numerous fields such as exhibition making, visual studies, art history, cultural criticism, the art market, urban planning, and Africana Studies.