curriculum vitae
SAMPADA ARANKE
Ph.D University of California, Davis, Performance Studies
BA University of California, Santa Cruz, Politics
Current Professional Appointment
Director of Mellon Archives Innovation Programs at Rebuild Foundation (2022-2023)
Assistant Professor, Art Theory, History, Criticism, School of the Art Institute, Chicago (on leave 2022-2023)
Past Professional Appointment
Assistant Professor, History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute (2015-2017)
Visiting Assistant Professor in Art History at the University of Illinois, Chicago (2014-2015)
Book Manuscript
Death’s Futurity: The Visual Life of Black Power analyzes how Black radical death was rhetorically and visually imagined as a generative means towards political liberation in ways that responded to state-sanctioned violence during the Black Power era. Mobilizing archival findings that have never been published, I critically analyze the ephemera surrounding the murders of three Black Panther Party members—Lil’ Bobby Hutton (1968), Fred Hampton (1969), and George Jackson (1971). I argue that these spectacularized murders marks a transition from Black Power to prison abolition. In order to track this historical and theoretical shift, I focus on how Black radicals transformed these state-sanctioned murders into opportunities to engage political action, primarily through the use of innovative compositional techniques that draw on a broader Black art-historical canon.
Curatorial Experience
2023 ayanah moor: undercover, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, October 2023
2023 Mike Henderson: Before the Fire, 1965-1985, co-curated with Dan Nadel, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, January- July 2023.
2022 Dewey Crumpler: Painting is an Act of Spiritual Aggression, organized with Jordan Stein and Dan Nadel, Derek Eller Gallery, March 17- April 23, 2022
2021 Dewey Crumpler: The Complete Hoodie Works, 1993-Present, co-curated with Jordan Stein, Cushion Works, San Francisco, September 25-November 20, 2021
2021 Arnold Joseph Kemp: i would survive i could survive i should survive, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis,
CA, January 31- April 25, 2021
2019 Feel Me?, Iceberg Projects, Chicago Illinois, September 2019
2018 Collapse: recent works by Dewey Crumpler, Hedreen Gallery, Seattle Washington, March 2018
2017 Dimensions of Black, guest curator, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, September 28- December 17, 2017
2017 unstable objects, co-curated with Kemi Adeyemi, Alice Gallery, Seattle Washington, September 2- October 14, 2017
Publications
“Reveal and Restraint: Ayanah Moor’s Social Abstraction,” liquid blackness journal 7:2, Durham: Duke University Press (October 2023), https://doi.org/10.1215/26923874-10658356
“Functional Abstractions: Sensorial Afterlives of The Black Body,” for A Site of Struggle: Making Meaning of Anti-Black Violence in American Art and Visual Culture, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.
“Context and Movement: Attica Desk Series and The Future of Visual Studies,” for Visual Studies, Volume 36, Issue 3 (2021) -- Visual Studies Roundtable, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rvst20/36/3
“Functional Abstractions: Sensorial Afterlives of The Black Body,” for A Site of Struggle: Making Meaning of Anti-Black Violence in American Art and Visual Culture, Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming.
“How to See Like Hammons,” liquid blackness journal 5:2, Durham: Duke University Press, (October 2021), https://read.dukeupress.edu/liquid-blackness/article/5/2/39/287403
“Blackouts and Other Visual Escapes,” Art Journal, Volume 79.4 (Winter 2020): 62-75.
“Muscle Memory,” for “A Questionnaire on Decolonization,” October, Vol. 174 (Fall 2020): 3-125.
“Bag Lady in Flight” for Black One Shot, edited by Michael Gillespie and Lisa Uddin, ASAP/J: the open access platform of ASAP/Journal, 14.3 (August 2020). http://asapjournal.com/14-3-bag-lady-in-flight-sampada-aranke/
“Voiding From Nowhere: Abject Materiality in David Hammons’s Pissed Off) for “Dossier: Afropessimist Aesthetics,” edited by Sampada Aranke and Huey Copeland, ASAP/ Journal 5.2 (May 2020). http://asapjournal.com/afro-pessimist-aesthetics-an-open-question/
“Dark Descriptions of Black Appearance,” in “Shady Convivialities in Tavia Nyong’o’s Afro-Fabulations, Persicope: Social Text Online (January 2020). https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/dark-descriptions-of-black-appearance/
“Response to T.J. Clark’s ‘The Conditions of Artistic Creation’ (1974).” Selva Journal, Issue Zero (April 2019). http://selvajournal.org/article/sampada-aranke
“Political Resistance.” Oxford Bibliographies in “African American Studies". Ed Gene Jarrett. New York: Oxford University Press, October 25, 2017. https://goo.gl/9ntzYx
Women & Performance Special Issue dedicated to the 20th Anniversary of Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Co-edited with Nikolas Oscar Sparks (Duke University, English). Issue 27.1: March 2017.
“Material Matters: Black Radical Aesthetics and the Limits of Visibility” for e-flux: journal. Solicited publication for special issue dedicated to Black Lives Matter. #79: February 2017.
“Blind Leading to Blind: Seeing Through David Hammons’s Blind Reality” for the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art David Hammons is on our mind. January 2017.
“Shades of Cool: Black Radical Aesthetics in the Face of Heat.” San Francisco Arts Quarterly. SFAQ 24: June 2016. https://goo.gl/CeVm3R
“Fred Hampton’s Murder and the Coming Revolution.” Trans-scripts Journal: An Interdisciplinary Online Journal in the Humanities and Social Sciences at UC Irvine. Volume 3 (2013). April 2013.
“Crisis Management as Representational Strategy: The Arrangement of ‘African’ Subjectivities and the 2010 World Cup." Co-written with Karl Zoller. Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies. Special Edition: "The 2010 World Cup Making the News" Ed. Sean Jacobs. (Vol 31: 2, 2010).
Exhibition Catalogue Essays
“Cashmere Sound, Voluminous Lines, Metallic Reverberations,” BENEATH TONGUES, Swiss Institute Annual Architecture and Design Series, curated by Sable Elyse Smith, New York, 2022
“‘I’m a child of history, a part of history…’: Assembly and Emergence in Blondell Cummings’s Photographic Dance,” Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures, Art + Practice/ X Artists Books, Los Angeles, September 2021.
“Betye Saar’s Atmospheric Reach,” Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight, Institute for Contemporary Art, Miami, October 2021- April 2022.
“Construction and Destruction in Elijah Pierce’s History Carvings,” for Elijah Pierce’s America, exhibition catalogue essay, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 2020.
“Everyday Exposures in Sable Elyse Smith’s Ordinary Violence” for Ordinary Violence, exhibition catalogue essay, Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 2018.
“Rashid Johnson’s (Black) Collective Attachment” for No More Water, exhibition catalogue essay, Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland, August 2018.
“Blurred Material in Howardena Pindell’s Video Drawings” for Video Drawings, exhibition catalogue essay, Document Gallery, Chicago, February 2018.
“Ephemeral Evidence” for Evidentiary Realism, exhibition catalogue essay, Nome Gallery, Berlin. January 2018.
“Studio/Streets: Faith Ringgold’s Sense of Practice” for Everywhere Studio, exhibition catalogue essay, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida. December 2017.
“unarchived but always present: Black contemporary artists and the stories told between them” for Dimensions of Black, UC Davis Art Museum, Davis, California. September 2017.
“Black Owned” for Black is a Color, exhibition catalogue essay, Charlie James Gallery, July 2017.
“Failure to Launch: Temporal Suspense in Kambui Olujimi’s Zulu Time” for Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time (solo show) exhibition catalogue essay, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin: Forthcoming June 2017.
“Whose 1968? Bringing History Home in Sadie Barnette’s Dear 1968,….” Sadie Barnette (solo show) exhibition catalogue essay, UC Davis Art Museum, Davis, California: April 2017.
“Gravity and Other Black Groundings: Zachary Fabri’s Lightness of Touch” in From the Wolf to the Fox (Solo Show), Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, New Jersey: January 2017.
“From a Fleshly Object to a Flash of Air.” Makeup on Empty Space exhibition catalogue, Time Based Art Festival. Portland, Oregon: September 2016.
Artist Books
“Questioned Post Externally: Rashid Johnson’s Aesthetic Invitations,” Rashid Johnson, Phaidon Press, New York: forthcoming.
“Cell Phone” for This is Not A Gun: 31 Objects, 31 Days, 31 Voices” by Cara Levine, Montez Press, March 2019.
“Exponential Blackness” for circumflex, circumflex, circumflex by Ima-Abasi Okon, The Show Room Publications, (forthcoming Fall 2019).
Reviews
Review of Out of Easy Reach at the DePaul Art Museum, Gallery 400 at UIC, Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago. Artforum, Fall 2018.
Review of Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display by Jennifer Tyburczy. caa.reviews. August 2017.
Review of David Hammons: Five Decades at the Mnuchin Gallery, New York City. Artforum, Fall 2016.
Review of Bound to Appear: Art, Slavery, and the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America by Huey Copeland. Art Journal. Spring 2015.
Select Honors and Awards
2022-2022 Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art Scholar-in-Residence
2021 CAA Art Journal Award
2018 Roger Brown Residency
2016 Precipice Fund Award Recipient
2016 Finalist, Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant, Creative Capital
2012-2013 Bilinski Fellow (awarded through the Davis Humanities Institute)
2012-2013 UC Performance Studies Departmental Fellowship
2010-2011 UC Davis Humanities Research Award
2010 UC Multi-campus Research Group Student Retreat in International Performance and Culture
Invited Talks
2018 “Fred Hampton’s Radical Objects,” Decolonizing Critical Theory (Epistemic Violences and Decolonial Aesthetics), Northwestern University, December 1st
2018 “Blackouts & Other Visual Escapes,” Black Embodiments Studio, University of Washington, Seattle, February 15th
2017 “Where Have All the Bodies Gone?” in conjunction with If Not Apollo, the Breeze, Kadist, San Francisco, November 15th
2017 Soul of a Nation Conference, Tate Modern, London. October 13th.
2017 Keynote address for the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. Cranbrook Academy of Art. February.
2016 “An Affiliation of Dissonance: George Jackson and Jean Genet.” Scripps College, Claremont, California. November.
2016 “Enfleshed Remains: Visualizing George Jackson’s War Without Terms.” California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California. November.
2016 “… seeing works by David Hammons in local collections.” Part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s year long programming on David Hammons, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California. October.
2016 “The Hammons-Effect.” Time Based Art Festival, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon. September.
2016 “Let’s Get Critical: A History of Critique in Art School.” Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland Oregon. September.
2015 “A Brief History of 1970s Black Conceptual Performance.” Time Based Art Festival, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon. September.
2014 “Enfleshed Remains: Visualizing George Jackson’s War Without Terms.” University of Illinois, Chicago, Art History Department. October.
2014 “Murdered at San Quentin: George Jackson, Black Lawlessness, and Incarcerated Embodiment.” University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Theater. April.
Invitations
2018 Moderator, “No Humans Involved,” The Milwaukee Model: Envisioning the Role of the Arts in Criminal Justice Reform. Panel participants included Sable Elyse Smith and Simone Browne. November 1.
2018 Moderator, UNFIXED: Material Challenges in Contemporary Art. Panel participants included Adrienne Edwards, Emilie Keldie, and Rebecca Schneider. June 28, 2018.
2016 Invited to facilitate gallery talks on David Hammons’s works for the Wattis Institute’s David Hammons is on our mind programming by Anthony Huberman (Director of CCA’s Wattis Institute). October 8,13, 22, San Francisco, California.
2016 Artist conversation with Kambui Olujimi for his solo show What Endures. Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California. October.
2016 Invited to moderate Black Artist Retreat by Eliza Myrie and Theaster Gates. August 19-20, Chicago, Illinois.
2014 In-gallery conversation entitled “Surfaces and Skins: Unpacking the Color Line” for the Gorgeous exhibit at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. July.
Select Conference Presentations
2017 “Set Yourself Free”: Black Liberation and Aesthetic Freedom.” Feminist Pedagogy through Activist Arts Practices Panel, College Art Association Annual Conference. New York City, New York. February.
2016 “Stealing Away: Black Embodiment and Shelter in Light of Scenes of Subjection.” American Studies Association Annual Conference. Denver, Colorado. November 2016.
2015 Session Chair and Organizer, “Black Sites and Fugitive Visions.” American Studies Association Annual Conference. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. October 2015.
2014 “Enfleshed Print: Black Contact, Contract, and Surface.” American Studies Association Annual Conference. Los Angeles, California. November 2014.
2013 “A place where ‘patience has its limits’: Black Lawlessness and Jackson’s Radical Repayment.” American Studies Association Annual Conference. Washington D.C., November 2013.
2013 “Murdered at San Quentin: George Jackson, Incarcerated Embodiment, and Institutionalized Blackness.” Performance Studies International Annual Conference. Stanford University, June 2013.
Academic Service
ongoing AICAD Post-MFA Fellowship Program
2016 Women in the Arts Committee Member (appointment runs until 2019)
2016 External Reviewer, National Women’s Studies Association
2016 Peer Reviewer, Art Journal
2015 Peer Reviewer, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters
2015 Peer Reviewer, Art Journal
2014 Peer Reviewer, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory
Institutional and Departmental Service
2018 Visiting Artist Program
2018 ARTHI Curriculum Committee
2018 SAIC Day
2017 Visiting Artist Program
Professional Associations
ongoing College Art Association
ongoing American Studies Association
2013 Performance Studies International
2012 The Society of the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
2012 Cultural Studies Association
2010 Performance Studies International
References
Available upon request.