Clark University Hosts 'Dark Humor and the African Image'

From Clark University: Clark University will host “Dark Humor and the African Image,” a lecture by curator Tiffany E. Barber, at 7 p.m. Thurs., Feb. 16, in the Higgins Lounge in Dana Commons. This free, public event is part of the Higgins School of Humanities’ spring symposium, “What’s So Funny?” as well as the on-going African American Intellectual Culture Series.

Barber will talk about how African American artists use satire, visual puns, farce, absurdity, kitsch, and the bizarre to present reverent, positive images of blackness in order to counteract the experience of slavery and racism. She will draw upon her recent exhibition, “Dark Humor: African American Art from the University of Delaware,” to consider the significance of humor in contemporary art. She will discuss how black artists such as Camille Billops, David Hammons, Barkley Hendricks, and Peter Williams employ subversive humor to question the currency of cultural and racial stereotypes.

Barber is a scholar, curator, and writer of twentieth and twenty-first century visual art and performance with a focus on artists of the black diaspora living and working in the United States.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities, the Office of the Provost, and the Department of Visual Performing Arts. For more information, call 508-793-7479 or email HigginsSchool@clarku.edu.

A complete list of all events in the Higgins symposium is available at https://www2.clarku.edu/higgins-school-of-humanities/.

Founded in 1887 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University is a liberal arts-based research university addressing social and human imperatives on a global scale. Nationally renowned as a college that changes lives, Clark is emerging as a transformative force in higher education today. LEEP (Liberal Education and Effective Practice) is Clark’s pioneering model of education that combines a robust liberal arts curriculum with life-changing world and workplace experiences. Clark’s faculty and students work across boundaries to develop solutions to complex challenges in the natural sciences, psychology, geography, management, urban education, Holocaust and genocide studies, environmental studies, and international development and social change. The Clark educational experience embodies the University’s motto: Challenge convention. Change our world.
www.clarku.edu

Photo courtesy of Clark University