JAC Talk: Afrofuturism
In Conversation with Al Miller, Melaine Ferdinand-King and Dr. Ikea Johnson
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
6 pm
$10 General Admission
$8 JAC Members, Students, and Seniors
Afrofuturism nestles strongly in the paintings of Algernon Miller, now showing at the Jamestown Art Center, as he re-examines ancient cosmologies of African civilizations and African American life and culture.
We are excited to invite Melaine Ferdinand-King and Dr. Ikea Johnson, two leading voices on the subject of Afrofuturism, to join Al Miller in discussing the philosophical, spiritual, and cultural complexity of its meaning and significance, October 24th at 6 pm.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Algernon Miller is a leading figure in the intellectual wing of Afrofuturist art. Educated at the School of Visual Arts (1965-67) and The New School (1967-68) during America’s cultural revolution, Al Miller’s Downtown art world included Happenings and Pop, Fluxus, and Warhol films, the Beat Poets along with the Afrofuturist jazz scene of Sun Ra. Deeply influenced by African studies and Afrocentric writings, Al Miller evolved what he calls a “transformationist” consciousness that synthesizes past, present, and future.
Al Miller’s work draws on sacred geometry, numerology, and the structures of nature, science and architecture, and he frequently references African and African-American artistic heritage, such as beading and quilting traditions. Yet, his use of new technologies traverses the so-called digital divide that associates blackness with technological disadvantage. Along with many Afrofuturist thinkers, he is conscious of a long line of “Blacks in Science,” under-recognized black inventors and innovators, and he experiments with sound, kinetic energy, solar-power, 3D animation, and holography. His emphasis on light, both represented and used as an artistic medium, undermines historical associations of blackness with darkness, and reinforces Afrofuturist metaphysical concepts.
Miller’s major public commissions include his Tree of Hope on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, and the Frederick Douglass Circle at the northwest corner of Central Park, which opened in 2010. His works are in several prominent collections, and have been featured at New York’s Museum of Arts & Design (MAD), the New Museum, the Whitney, The Studio Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in France at the Espace Lyonnais d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, among others.
Melaine Ferdinand-King earned her B.A. in Sociology from Spelman College, with concentrations in comparative women's studies and African Diaspora & the World. Her research interests include Black aesthetics and culture, Black internationalism, and Afrodiasporic consciousness movements. Her current work is a cultural history and exploration of Afro-Surrealism throughout the Black Radical Tradition, emphasizing 20th-century U.S. and Francophone Caribbean art and activism. She holds graduate fellowships and affiliations with the Pembroke Center for Research and Teaching on Women, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. In addition to her graduate work, Melaine is a poet and curator committed to bridging gaps between academia and the Providence community. She enjoys jazz and soul music, language learning, and comedy. Melaine is a recipient of the Brown University Mae Belle Williamson Simmons Diversity Fellowship.
Dr. Ikea M. Johnson’s research often centers around Buddhist and Kemetic liberty. She explores comparative methods from literary, philosophical, spiritual, and cultural studies lenses. She writes about topics like the socio-political history of African American discourse, Black-Orientalism, and contemporary African American/Womanist scholarship on Black spirituality and Asian religions. She also studies and teaches Afrofuturism, comparative literature, world literature, and philosophy at Salve Regina University.