Aruna D'Souza

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Thursday, February 18 at 4-5PM EST
St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia PA

A discussion between gallerist Aisha Khan and critic Aruna D’Souza on how looking at diaspora artists, including Lorraine O’Grady and Baseera Khan, can offer ideas for negotiating anti-Blackness in the US, and create possibilities for solidarity and visibility among communities of color. Moderated by St. Joseph’s University professor Martha Easton.

Author of "Whitewalling: Art, Race and Protest in 3 Acts" Aruna D'Souza joins the Union Art Gallery to present her research followed by a relevant discussion with artists Sami Ismat, Aram Han Sifuentes and Jeanette Arellano and curator Danielle Paswaters. This discussion is aimed at navigating an academic and constructive conversation around the controversial events that led up to the opening of the exhibition Here to Stay: Braving Barriers Through Performance and to contextualize the events that occured here to the broader movements throughout the united states with institutional approaches to presenting and at times censoring the presentation of "difficult art."

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International Studio & Curatorial Program

April 27-28, 2020. Watch here.

Through looking at the work of Lorraine O’Grady, advice for artists seeking to make their way in the world.

On Wednesday, September 23, 2020, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) presented a virtual lecture featuring author and art historian Aruna D’Souza. This engaging lecture examines modern and contemporary art, intersectional feminisms, and how museums shape our views of each other and our world. Learn more from D’Souza, whose most recent book Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited) was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times.

This program is part of SAAM’s annual Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art series, which highlights excellence and innovation in American art with outstanding artists, critics, and scholars.

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Listen to a conversation between Aruna D’Souza, writer and curator, and Dylan Robinson, author of Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies and Co-Curator of ICI’s Traveling Exhibition, Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts. A previously recorded conversation on Robinson’s new book, Hungry Listening, will be followed by a live Q&A.

Hungry Listening is the first book to consider listening from both Indigenous and settler-colonial perspectives, and a critical response to what has been called the “whiteness of sound studies.” In addition to examples of how decolonial practices of listening emerge from an increased awareness of listening positionality, Hungry Listening includes a series of event scores, dialogic improvisations, and forms of poetic response and refusal that demand a reorientation toward the act of reading as a way of listening.

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ICYMI: Edinboro University hosted nationally renowned Aruna D’Souza, who served as juror for this year’s Annual Erie Art Museum Spring Show. She presented a public conversation, “Against Empathy: The Value of Mistranslation in Art and Life.”

D’Souza’s presentation was followed by a discussion hosted by Edinboro professor Dr. Charlotte H. Wellman with Erie educator Cheryl Rush Dix and two more Edinboro professors: Dr. Leslie C. Sotomayor (art education) and Dr. Rhonda Matthews (political science). Check out the entire presentation.

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Aruna D’Souza reads her essay “In Formation” from the book I Stand in My Place with My Own Day Here: Site Specific Art at the New School. D’Souza addresses Agnes Denes’ New School commission which depicts a pyramid comprised of human figures. She explores themes of individualism and the collective quest for democracy, inviting us to re-imagine our engagement in the world through a call to “radically collectivity… guided by a sense of common will.”

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Join writer Aruna D’Souza as we explore the intersections of social justice and the art world. In her work, D'Souza focuses on modern and contemporary art, intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics, and how museums shape our views of each other and the world. Her most recent book “Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts” was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times.

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December 6 2019
ISCP 25th Anniversary Symposium: Cultural Exchange and the Life of the Metropolis

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This panel addressed art, race and justice in the current transnational art ecosystem, and particularly in residencies. According to artist Francisco Guevara, residencies are spaces where “important ethical questions intersect.” Residencies build connections across culture sand differences, and with this in mind, the panel considered the ethical responsibilities and commitments of institutions in supporting exchange, new identities, artistic freedom and even confrontation and resistance.

Speakers: Luis Camnitzer, artist and Professor Emeritus of Art, SUNY Old Westbury; Aruna D’Souza, writer and author of 'Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts;' Howardena Pindell, artist and Distinguished Professor of Art, SUNY Stony Brook; and Jillian Steinhauer, journalist and editor . Moderator: Jillian Steinhauer.

January 16, 2020

Conversation with the artist Teresita Fernández at the Perez Art Museum in Miami on the occasion of her mid-career retrospective, “Elemental.” Watch full video here.

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ABOUT SPEAKING TRUTH | SUMMIT X

Can speaking truth to power unravel the age of disillusion we find ourselves in?

As fierce debates about the nature of truth rage on globally, Speaking Truth | Summit X explores radical truth-telling and its implications, manifestations, potentialities, and challenges across disparate yet interconnected fields. Join the conversation using the #CTSummit tag on Instagram & Twitter!

ABOUT THIS SECTION

In this section, we address the impetus to forge connections and solidarity structures, as well as the necessity of supporting those who explore controversial ideas and challenge conventional wisdom.

ABOUT ARUNA D’SOUZA

“Empathy will not save us.”

Aruna D’Souza writes about modern and contemporary art, intersectional feminisms, politics, and how museums shape our views of each other and the world. D’Souza’s most recent book, Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited, 2018), was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times. Her work appears regularly in 4Columns.org, where she is a member of the editorial advisory board.

Over the past year, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School (http://www.newschool.edu) has partnered with ARTICLE19, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the New York Peace Institute, and Weeksville Heritage Center to address the perennially contested right to free speech. The effort stems from an invitation by artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar, and his artwork, Such a Morning (2017), which can be seen as an allegory for retreating into darkness to consider ideas and realities that require profound reorientation. In the context of today's fraught political climate in the U.S. and internationally, the partner organizations came together to present public seminars from each of their particular perspectives as well as those of artists, writers, and poets.

This two-day Closing Convening assembles both the partners in this project as well as presenters from the original seminars to engage in a public discussion of where this in-depth series of conversations has led us. The Closing Convening is organized around a letter that the professor featured in Such a Morning pens. Letter number 7 suggests three phases to create a curriculum for studies into darkness. The first, Arrival and Anticipation, addresses legal and psychological frameworks of individual bodies, and the body politic, in relationship to freedom of speech. It includes formative uses of free speech ranging from poetry to manifestoes, addresses physical space as a site of expression and invites imagining how we might make ready or prepare for desired futures. Then comes Order and Disintegration, and here existing structures and their logics are examined alongside strategies for interruption and subversion. Finally, Silence and Transformation, the state wherein withdrawal and silence create a generative space for thinking and future action, where transformation might be possible.

Featuring Chloe Bass (artist), Aruna D'Souza (writer and art historian), Kameelah Janan Rasheed (artist and educator. Moderated by Laura Raicovich (co-curator, Freedom of Speech)

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Writer Aruna D’Souza in conversation with Nico Wheadon (Director, Public Programs & Community Engagement, Studio Museum in Harlem) and Sable Elyse Smith (artist)

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March 25 2019
Museum of Modern Art

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Myriad recent cultural and political events—among them the debris surrounding the 2016 US election, the #metoo movement, and the latest Supreme Court confirmation hearings—have reawakened a public discussion on the centuries-old power structure that contemplates the unabated supremacy of white men.

The label "white man" is now actively used in public discourse and acknowledged as part of identity politics, instead of remaining, as the baseline for all definitions, largely unmentioned. Nowadays, it is often even used pejoratively and as a stereotyping tactic. This time of reckoning has however also sensitized public opinion to the fact that white men, like any other identity, are not a monolithic group, and therefore a more nuanced approach is required for a constructive debate and for the health of our society.

Join an important and nuanced conversation in this MoMA R&D Salon hosted by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture & Design and Director of Research & Development at MoMA, with speakers (in alphabetical order):

Rich Benjamin: Anthropologist and political commentator, author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, a 2009 study that has illuminated the rise of white anxiety and white nationalism.

Whitney Dow: Filmmaker and educator, he has been producing and directing films focused on race and identity for almost two decades. His current focus is on the Whiteness Project, an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race.

Aruna D'Souza: Writes about modern and contemporary art; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; and how museums shape our views of each other and the world. Her most recent book Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited), reflects on three incidents in the long and troubled history of art and race in America.

Justin Stanwix: Co-founder of Wonder Unit, a new model of movie studio, he has a background in the technology sector, and is currently an ambassador for the non-profit art space Pioneer Works, co-chairs the Creative Time ambassadors and is a member of the ProjectART Advisory Council.

The presentations are accompanied by a series of 1-minute videos cut specifically for Salon 30.

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Vera List Center

The fourth seminar in the series Freedom of Speech: A Curriculum for Studies into Darkness explores the particular ways in which we use language -- dialects, registers of speaking, non-verbal speech -- in relation to the knowledge we produce for imagined publics, as well as its impacts and, ultimately, how we convey our ideas.

A group of artists who think profoundly about these issues will be joined by anthropologists and language specialists, as well as educators, art historians and Indigenous scholars to contend with myriad related questions including: Do we imagine a particular person or a group when we formulate speech? Is this choice conscious? What might this reveal about us? What does the actual language we use to communicate convey? Is it a native tongue or in translation? Does it take up the languages of theory, or of daily speech? What does a silent position mean? What role does the refusal to speak play in the right to free speech?

The evening begins with "Brighter Than the Brightest Star I've Ever Seen," a special performance by Kite (Suzanne Kite), Oglala Lakota composer and performance and visual artist. It will be followed by a discussion among Kite, writer and art historian Aruna D'Souza, artist and educator Kameelah Janan Rasheed, anthropologist Stefania Pandolfo, Mojave poet, language activist, and educator Natalie Diaz, and Ross Perlin, Co-Director of the Endangered Language Alliance. Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich will moderate, and seminar participants will be asked to reflect on the readings provided as well as contribute to the discussion.

Writing in the Reparative Mode

Monday, November 26, 2018
The 8th Floor
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Aruna D'Souza delivered the twelfth annual AICA-USA Distinguished Critic Lecture in partnership with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

When she returned to art writing two years ago after a five-year absence, Aruna D'Souza decided she would like her approach to the task to atone for past failures—failures of politics, of style, of generosity. She had just read Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" and began to wonder what, in the era of Black Lives Matter and #SayHerName, a reparative mode of criticism might look like. Her talk will explore some of her thinking—and lay out some further questions about what art criticism might offer in our urgent political moment.

October 9, 2019 [Video here]
Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles

Aruna D’Souza’s new book Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts—reflecting on three exhibitions at the Met, Artists Space, and the Whitney that shook the art world—asks the question: When we speak of artistic freedom and freedom of speech, who, exactly, is free to speak? Artist Tomashi Jackson joins D’Souza in conversation.

In the Balance podcast with Susan Lambert, July 23, 2018 [Audio here]

“My friends tell me empathy is my superpower,” says Aruna D’Souza, “but I am deeply suspicious of the idea of empathy as a motor for political change.” Protest and empathy is at the center of this conversation between Aruna and Susan. 

If we delve deeply into the slogan Love Trumps Hate what will we discover about personal will vs collective will? Writing White Walling: Art, Race, and Protest in Three Acts was a self-education for Aruna - an act of transformation - an exercise in what it means to be an ally “sitting and looking carefully at what people have said, without falling back on knee-jerk arguments like free speech and artistic freedom, caused me to ask - to what extent are these things just shields for us not to talk about racism?”

June 30, 2018 [Video here]

The Kitchen in collaboration with The Racial Imaginary Institute presents a day-long interactive symposium on the phenomenology, distortions and diagnostics of white dominated space, featuring keynote addresses, panel discussions, and a musical performance. The proceedings will include speeches by The Future of Whiteness author Linda Alcoff, historian and artist Nell Painter, and legal scholar and The Alchemy of Race and Rights author Patricia Williams. Chris Chen will moderate a morning panel on cultural representation and appropriation with Jeff Chang, Aruna D'Souza, Daniel Borzutsky, Sarah Lewis, and Doreen St. Felix. In the afternoon, Rizvana Bradley will moderate a panel focusing on the empathy and likeability in the context of white dominance with Lauren Berlant, Sadhana Bery, Jane Caflisch, Lori Gruen, and Saidiya Hartman. Vijay Iyer will also perform as the conclusion of his residency The What of the World, which will be followed by a discussion with Claudia Rankine and Patricia Williams. 

IMAGE: Ken Gonzales-Day, Untitled III (Antico [Pier Jacopo Alari-Bonacolsi], Bust of a Young Man and Francis Harwood, Bust of a Man, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), 2010. Courtesy the artist and Luis DeJesus Gallery. 

Collage, Colour and Complicating Blackness
1-54 Forum, Pioneer Works, May 4, 2018 [Audio here]

DERRICK ADAMS’ multidisciplinary work mines the histories of art and popular culture in order to visually present a complex understanding of black life in the US. LAWRENCE LEMAOANA is known for his embroidered kanga cloths, which humorously appropriate the language of South African politics and mass media. In conversation ARUNA D’SOUZA (art writer), they will discuss consciousness and community, as well as the centrality of text, fabric and craft in their work.

Communitas Lecture, Utah State University, October 12, 2017 [Video here]

October 7, 2017 [Click here for video]

June 1, 2017

April 28, 2017

March 15, 2017

March 24, 2017

January 20, 2017

February 6, 2016

March 5, 2016

October 10, 2013

April 29, 2013

July 24, 2010

September 17 2020
Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts
University of Houston

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