The Chart is thrilled to announce Imani Roach as our 2018 Visiting Critic! Imani will be the inaugural critic in a week-long pilot residency program that will encompass investigation of place, critical engagement and discussion, and which will foster the beginnings of reciprocal relationships among artists, writers, and publications through dialogue and writing.
Imani Roach is a Philadelphia-based scholar, visual artist and musician. Across disciplines, her interests include the surveillance, consumption and containment of black emotion, vulnerability and entitlement practices in urban space, gender and the public/private divide, and aging bodies in the American imaginary. She is the Managing Editor of Artblog (an online journal for local arts criticism), a member at Vox Populi gallery and collective, a co-founder of The Lonely Painter Project (a bi-coastal performance collaborative), and an instructor at the University of the Arts, where she teaches the art of Africa and the black diaspora. She is also a doctoral candidate at Harvard, writing on the first generation of black South African photojournalists under Apartheid. She performs regularly as a vocalist in the soul, folk and jazz idioms. Her writing has appeared in both Artblog and Guernica magazines.
Roach was selected from an exciting pool of talented writers and editors from across the country by a jury of three Maine-based arts professionals. Ellen Y. Tani, Ph.D, Christopher Stiegler, and Julien Langevin selected Roach based on the outstanding strength her writing and the commitment of equity evidenced therein. The jurors, whose bios are below, were particularly moved by the urgency and expansiveness of Roach’s vision and practice, and the nuance and care that frames her work. You can read more of her writing on Artblog and Guernica.
The dates of Roach’s visit in July are forthcoming and more details will be shared as available. She will be giving a talk that will be free and open to the public, as well as visiting studios, galleries, museums, and other art sites. The Visiting Critic program is being developed around critics and writers with a contemporary focus on equity, cultural care, and a spirit of tenderness and generosity. It is funded by support from The Kindling Fund, a grant administered by SPACE Gallery as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program.
2018 Visiting Critic Jury
Ellen Y. Tani, PhD is an art historian, curator and critic whose research explores the political and philosophical endeavors of contemporary artists, with an emphasis on race and difference. She is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, where she recently curated the exhibition Second Sight: the Paradox of Vision in Contemporary Art (March 1–June 3, 2018). In Spring 2018, she will transition to Assistant Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Dr. Tani received her PhD from Stanford University in 2015, where her dissertation, “Black Conceptualism and the Atmospheric Turn, 1968-2008,” examined how artists like Charles Gaines, David Hammons, Lorraine O’Grady and Lorna Simpson responded to the interconnected legacies of conceptual art and the black arts movement. Her writing has been featured in The Chart, Art Practical, Temporary Art Review, Daily Serving, American Quarterly, Apricota, and Artsy.
Christopher Stiegler is a professor and curator of contemporary art based in Portland, Maine. Currently he runs the Institute for American Art with John Sundling, his husband and collaborator. The project, situated in their apartment with satellite bases, showcases the work of a single artist per show as a way to engage the viewer differently. Founded in 2012, the Institute has shown the work of artists, curators, cultural producers, and publishers.
Julien Langevin is a critical artist, activist, and writer based in Portland, Maine. Their current artistic interests involve the construction of self, gender, and perception. Ongoing political interests involve destroying the kyriarchy. Julien is a former Editorial Assistant at The Chart and current part-time staff writer.
