June 26 – July 13, 2017

Led by Mario Gooden

Taking Olalekan Jeyifous Africa 2081 series as a model, the workshop will explore “portraits” of liberation and collective action and the ways we think about urban imaginaries. This urban portrait of Harare, Zimbabwe and linking to other sites in the African Diaspora, will explore how the imagination, dreams of the future, and desire inform social movements and radical social practices embedded in the everyday life of cities. The workshop is a drawing and representation workshop and will extend the research and panel discussion of the 2016 Black Portraiture(s) Conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa in November 2016 on the discourse of Afro-Urban futures. The panel included scholars spanning the disciplines of architecture, art history, film and media, and psychology, transmedia, transnational, and diasporic conversations as we consider the last 40 years of urban engagement and change and think about how this might aid in mapping our Radical Black Imaginaries. The workshop will collaborate with Njelele Art Station in Zimbabwe led by curator Dana Whabira.