VIRTUAL - Remix & Metamorphosis: Visual Art in “Punching the Air”

The subjects of making visual art and its histories are intertwined threads skillfully woven together throughout Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam’s powerful and poetic book.  Through the book’s structure and character’s narrative, the reader experiences a typical telling of art history, one that more often than not is white and Eurocentric; one that omits a wider world view and representation by Black artists; one that its main character, Amal Shahid, must unravel to create his own tapestry.  This session will discuss and look at the book’s references to art movements, artists, and specific works of art, and finally, consider the transformative remix strategy employed by Shahid with examples by contemporary Black artists in the U.S. 

Rhonda Reymond, Ph.D., is an art historian and associate director of the Humanities Center at West Virginia University.  Her area of specialization is art history of the United States with an emphasis in late nineteenth and early-twentieth-century art and architecture, and particularly work created by Black artists.   

Selected publications on African American art include, “"Reevaluating African American Art Before the Harlem Renaissance."  In African American Literature in Transition, 1900-1910.  Ed. by Shirley Moody-Turner.  Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.  (in press, May 2021) and “Looking in: Albert A. Smith’s Use of Repoussoir in Cover Illustrations for The Crisis and Opportunity.” American Periodicals and Visual Culture 20, no. 2 (2010): 216-240.

A zoom link will be provided on day of the event.