Bhabha/Wilson/Rasheed: A Conversation on Cultural Appropriation, Representation and Free Speech

Please join postcolonial scholar and Harvard professor Homi Bhabha and artists Fred Wilson and Kameelah Janan Rasheed for a panel discussion on the ethics and aesthetics of cultural appropriation, the ideals and limits of free speech and the politics of representation in the US today. The panel will be moderated by Leora Maltz-Leca, associate professor and department head of History of Art & Visual Culture at RISD. 

Homi Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg professor of the humanities in the department of English at Harvard University, where he is also director of the Mahindra Humanities Center and senior advisor on the humanities to the president and provost. Bhabha is author of numerous works exploring postcolonial theory, cultural change and power and cosmopolitanism, among other themes. His works include Nation and Narration (Routledge, 1990) and The Location of Culture (Routledge, 2004).

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is an interdisciplinary American artist, writer and former high school public school teacher. She is known for her immersive text-based installations and her work in photography and book arts, much of which analyzes how language is used to construct and manipulate Black subjectivity. She was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in 2017 and has recently received grants from the Magnum and Harpo Foundations, among others.

Fred Wilson is an American artist famous for his incisive challenges to and provocative recasting of received notions of American history. He works expansively across a range of media, from seminal site-specific installations to forays into glass. He received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 1999 and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 2003. Wilson represented the US at the 50th Venice Biennale with the solo exhibition Speak of Me as I Am in 2003. Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader was published by Ridinghouse in 2009.

This event was conceived and organized by Paula Gaetano-Adi, associate professor and programs head of Experimental & Foundation Studies and Leora Maltz-Leca, associate professor and department head of History of Art & Visual Culture, with the support of Interim Provost Tracie Constantino and Dean of Experimental & Foundation Studies Joanne Stryker. It is hosted by the divisions of Experimental & Foundation Studies and Liberal Arts in partnership with the Provost’s Office as a part of RISD’s Social Equity and Inclusion Initiative.

The panel is free and open to the public, and it will be streamed at livestream.com/risd. For more information about the event and to request tickets, please visit Eventbrite.