Xaviera Simmons: Malleable Forms – Define Abolition

Renowned multidisciplinary artist and 2019-20 Visiting Lecturer Xaviera Simmons is the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies’ inaugural Solomon Fellow. For her public program on November 6 at the Annex, Simmons will create an ambitious 6 hour-long participatory presentation including talks, film screenings, performances as well as group activities in storytelling, movement, and sound. Guided by students enrolled in AFVS 81R, Malleable Forms, the audience will engage questions of systemic rupture and carceral justice, the undoing of “whiteness” in its many forms, as well the idea of reparations to the descendants of American chattel slavery as the ultimate systemic shift of the American project. Simmons, her students, and her guests will collaborate with the audience to revel in, construct and contemplate on urgent topics of the day. A full list of participants will be announced prior to the event.  Free and open to the public.

The 2019 Solomon Fellowship Public Program is presented by the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, in collaboration with the ArtLab and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. 

The Solomon Fellowship invites two distinguished artists per year for a multi-day visit in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies in partnership with the ArtLab, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts and the wider Harvard art community. The Fellowship, a generous gift of the Solomon Family, deepens and extends visiting artists' involvement in the life of the Department and the University at large.

For more information please contact the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies: [email protected]. Students interested in participating in a private aftertalk with Simmons from 10:00-11:45 am on Thursday, November 7,  RSVP to [email protected]