Antwaun Sargent on Black Queer Utopia

Watch a recording of the event here. 

Join us for a conversation with writer Antwaun Sargent and artists Shikeith and Naima Green, as they discuss the ways Black queer artists are redefining the notion of utopia. As Sargent explains in his essay “The Future Will See You Now,” Black queer artists are using photography in defiance of the “straight imagination,” and in doing so, creating their own narratives of desire and relief.

In the Winter 2020 issue of Aperture magazine, “Utopia,” artists, photographers, and writers envision a world without prisons, document visionary architecture, honor queer space and creativity, and dream of liberty through spiritual self-expression. They show us that utopia is not a far-fetched scheme, or a “no place” (the literal meaning of the word utopia), but rather a way of reconsidering the everyday.

Antwaun Sargent is a writer and critic living and working in New York City. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, W, Vogue and other publications. He has contributed to essays in museums and gallery publications on Ed Clark, Mickalene Thomas, Arthur Jafa, Deborah Roberts and Yinka Shonibare, among other artists. Sargent has lectured and participated in public conversations with artists at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, MCA Denver, Art Gallery of Ontario and Harvard and Yale universities. He has also co-organized a number of exhibitions, including The Way We Live Now at Aperture, Then and Now: Chase Hall and Cameron Welch at Jenkins Johnson Projects, and the traveling exhibition, Young, Gifted and Black. The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion is his first book.

Shikeith (born in Philadelphia, 1989) is an artist and filmmaker based in Pittsburgh. He received an MFA in sculpture from the Yale School of Art, and a BA in integrative arts from the Pennsylvania State University. His work investigates the experiences of Black men within and around concepts of psychic space. Shikeith is recipient of a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, a 2020 Art Matters Foundation Grant, and a 2020–21 Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship.

Naima Green (born in Philadelphia, 1990) is an artist and educator based in New York. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including at Fotografiska New York; the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; the International Center of Photography, New York; Bronx Museum; and BRIC, Brooklyn. Her works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art Library and International Center of Photography Library, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, among other institutions. She holds an ICP-Bard MFA; an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University; and a BA from Barnard College. Photo by Makeda Sanford. 

Image: Shikeith, Prince, 2019; Courtesy the artist

Programming for Aperture magazine’s “Utopia” issue is presented in partnership with London-based fashion brand JW Anderson.