Surrealism and Us Exhibition Symposium

The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth presents Surrealism and Us: A Symposium, organized by curator María Elena Ortiz and independent scholar Negarra A. Kudumu, with the support of Maria Barrientos, education administrator at the Modern.

Featuring artist’s conversations and performances, this symposium is inspired by the themes of the special exhibition, including Suzanne Cesaire’s reflections on the utility of Surrealism as a tool for liberation in Martinique and the broader Caribbean. The Symposium explores artistic production with participating artists and writers, focusing on contemporary Caribbean art along with notions of Surrealism, Afrosurrealism, and Afrofuturism through a series of discussions, a keynote address, and performance.

Surrealism and Us: A Symposium is supported in part by the Kent Family Fund and Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, along with promotional support provided by Glasstire.

Kenny Rivero, “Olafs and Chanclas,” 2021. Oil on canvas. 72 x 72 inches. Collection of Michael Sherman. © Kenny Rivero
Photograph by Ed Mumford, Courtesy of the Artist and Charles Moffett, New York

Artists in Conversation
Museum Auditorium
With Dr. Tiffany Barber, April Bey, Kim Dacres, Dalton Gata, Negarra A. Kudumu, Ashley Stull Meyers, María Elena Ortiz, Kenny Rivero, and Jasmine Thomas-Girvan, Surrealism and Us: A Symposium generates a space for conversation and discussion about certain themes presented in the exhibition and its accompanying publication. Artists, writers, and curators consider themes on Afrodiasporic spiritualities, resistance, and dreams, among other creative strategies.

Keynote Address
Museum Auditorium
Cole Arthur Riley, creator and writer of Black Liturgies (Convergent Books, 2024), shares their project centered on providing a space for spiritual practice, safety, and community. With prayers, poems, and meditation, Black Liturgies offers storytelling and myths highlighting the role of spirituality in contemporary culture.

Performance
Sculpture Terrace/Exhibition Galleries
Rashida Bumbray presents Run Mary Run (and Us), an intimate site-specific performance of the ring shout—accessed through the architectures of improvisation, surrender, and possession—in pursuit of functional responses to displacement, erasure, and social forgetting. This spiritual dance work considers the harmonic ideas and tonal vocabulary of master ring shouters the McIntosh County Shouters as a point of departure. Featuring Rashida Bumbray, Cecily Bumbray, Malik Bellamy, Ayanna Lee Blue, Lisa E. Harris, Carl Hewitt, and Rachel Schaffran with Jabari Exum (percussion) and Colin Chambers (keys).

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE

10 am
Introduction by Curator María Elena Ortiz

10:15 am
Curator María Elena Ortiz, in conversation with artists Dalton Gata and Kim Dacres

11:15 am
Ashley Stull Meyers, Mary Jones and Thomas Hart Horning Chief Curator of Art, Science and Technology at PRAx, Oregon State University, in conversation with artist Kenny Rivero

12:15 pm
Independent scholar Negarra A. Kudumu, in conversation with artist Jasmine Thomas-Girvan

1:15 pm
Lunch break

2:45 pm
Dr. Tiffany Barber, independent curator, scholar, and Assistant Professor of African American Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, in conversation with artist April Bey

3:45 pm
Keynote address by Cole Arthur Riley, creator and writer of Black Liturgies

4:15 pm
Performance by artist and curator Rashida Bumbray with Cecily Bumbray, Malik Bellamy, Ayanna Lee Blue, Lisa E. Harris, Carl Hewitt, and Rachel Schaffran, with Jabari Exum (percussion) and Colin Chambers (keys)

EXHIBITION

On view through July 28, 2024

Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940, organized by Curator María Elena Ortiz, is a thematic exhibition inspired by the history of Surrealism in the Caribbean with connections to notions of the Afrosurreal in the United States. With a global perspective, Surrealism and Us is the first intergenerational show dedicated to Caribbean and African diasporic art presented at the Modern.

Inspired by the essay “1943: Surrealism and Us” by Suzanne Césaire, this exhibition presents over 80 works from the 1940s to the present day, in a wide range of media such as painting, sculpture, drawing, video, and installation. Centered on the intersection of Caribbean aesthetics, Afrosurrealism, and Afrofuturism, this exhibition explores how Caribbean and Black artists interpreted a modernist movement. Artworks framed within a pre-existing history of Black resistance and creativity illustrate how Caribbean and Black artists reinterpreted the European avant-garde for their own purposes.

Opening in 2024, the centennial anniversary of the publication of André Breton’s first Surrealist manifesto, the exhibition rethinks the history of modernism through the lens of Black and diasporic thinking, and in light of contemporary dialogues on Blackness and Caribbean art.

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