Join artists Genevieve Gaignard and Samuel Levi Jones for walkthroughs of their respective solo exhibitions “I’m Sorry I Never Told You That You’re Beautiful” and “No More Tokens,” followed by a conversation with Leigh Raiford, associate professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Free and open to the public. Refreshments and light bites will be served. Parking is available on the north side of the building.
About the participants
Genevieve Gaignard (b. 1981, Orange, MA) received her BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston (2007) and her MFA in Photography from Yale University, New Haven (2014). Her work was included in the exhibition Still I Rise opened at MASS MoCA in June 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include Black White and Red All Over, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, IL; Counterfeit Currency, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2018); and Hidden Fences, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France (2018). Her work was also included in Prospect 4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, New Orleans, LA (2017); Personal Space, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2018); the Daegu Biennial, curated by Ami Barak, Daegu, South Korea (2018); Talisman in the Age of Difference, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK (2018); and Fictions, The Studio Museum in Harlem (2017).Select public collections include The Art Institute of Chicago; The Studio Museum in Harlem; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Pérez Art Museum Miami; The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC; The FLAG Art Foundation, New York; and the San Jose Museum of Art, CA.
Samuel Levi Jones received an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA in 2012. He has had solo exhibitions at Newfields, Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, IN; the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Galerie Lelong, New York, NY; PATRON, Chicago, IL; and PAPILLON, Los Angeles, CA. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Smart Museum, Chicago, IL; the International Print Center New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; the Mistake Room, Los Angeles, CA; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and the Watts Towers Art Center, Los Angeles, CA among others. Jones is represented by PATRON in Chicago, IL and Galerie LeLong in New York, NY.
Leigh Raiford is an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches and researches about race, gender, justice and visuality. Raiford is the author of Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle; co-editor with Heike Raphael-Hernandez of Migrating the Black Body: Visual Culture and the African Diaspora, and with Renee Romano of The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory. Raiford has written essays about the work of a number of contemporary black artists and most recently has co-curated with Essence Harden the group shows Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles (with Essence Harden) and About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive.