The artist Kehinde Wiley was born and raised in Los Angeles. But he has become a true global citizen. He lives and works in New York, Beijing, and Dakar. That’s where he founded Black Rock Senegal in 2019 — it’s a multidisciplinary artist-in-residence program that invites artists from around the world to live and create work in the Senegalese capital.It’s symbolically significant. The West African nation was occupied by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, and the French for more than 300 years. It was a hub of the slave trade. Senegal only gained independence in 1960. We all know that horrific history is a common story in this world.
The organization Live Free USA was invited to convene a set of conversations to pair with the exhibit during its run at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Over the course of six months, in a program sponsored by KALW, they brought together leading thinkers in culture, arts, and activism from around the world.
In the fifth of these conversations, inspired by Kehinde Wiley’s traveling exhibition “An Archaeology of Silence,” we’ll look head-on at the legacy of harm done to Black and Brown people. And we’ll consider what’s being done to redress this pain and damage in our current context.
It's called "Our Shared Struggle: The International Imperative for Repair."
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You can hear a long-form documentary of this event here: