Through a critical investigation of the controversial and polarizing notion of post-black, this lecture will explore the impact that sexual politics and queer identities have on our understanding of blackness as a set of visual, cultural, and intellectual concerns. The re-articulation of African-American identity emergent in contemporary art suggests that the visual markers of hetero-normative blackness have failed to represent the lives and identities of individuals whose gender and sexual orientations often position them outside dominant understandings of black identity. The aim of this paper is to produce new and innovative interpretive possibilities that will elucidate the specific conceptual, aesthetic, and political concerns of post-Civil Rights generation visual artists.



Derek Conrad Murray is an interdisciplinary theorist specializing in the history, theory and criticism of contemporary art. He holds a Ph.D. in art history from Cornell University. Murray is currently Assistant Professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His book, Regarding Difference: Contemporary African-American Art and the Politics of Recognition, will be published by Manchester University Press in 2015, as part of the series Rethinking Art’s Histories (eds. Amelia Jones and Marsha Meskimmon). Murray is also in the process of completing his second book entitled Queering Post-Black Art: Rethinking African-American Identity After Civil Rights, forthcoming from I.B. Tauris (UK). 



This lecture is presented by the Townsend Working Group in Contemporary Art, which seeks to broaden conversations about contemporary art across departments, disciplines and institutions. Our meetings feature speakers sharing their recent work or spotlighting current issues in contemporary art. We are grateful to the Townsend Center for the Humanities for their support.