Curated by Meg Onli

Joining a number of recent exhibitions seeking to define the discursive black radical tradition, “Speech/Acts” reflects on the legacy of the Black Arts Movement, which centered poetry, literature, and performance in its engagement with political discourses and everyday life following the civil rights movement. The exhibition situates an emerging generation of conceptualists alongside contemporary experimental poets and theorists such as Claudia Rankine and Fred Moten, demonstrating the elasticity of language as it circulates as text, image, or utterance—delivered in person, on a page, or on-screen. Accompanied by a reading room and a publication, the show features new works by Jibade-Khalil Huffman (his piece is inspired by Rankine’s critically acclaimed Citizen: An American Lyric [2014]) and Tiona McClodden (whose video and curatorial work often delves into queer and black creative genealogies), as well as recent videos, installations, and drawings by Steffani Jemison, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Martine Syms, and Tony Lewis.

— Jamillah James