Spectacles of non-being: on racialized bodies and the limits of appearance

The estrangement and thingification of racialized bodies have been used to both absent and claim agency. This talk will look at carnival traditions, the work of Stan Douglas and Ousmane Sembène to consider the role of negation, incorporation and spectacle alongside arguments on the ‘non-being’ body as machinic, imperceptable and fragmentary.

Denise Ryner is the current Andrea B. Laporte Curator at ICA University of Pennsylvania. She has worked for over 15 years in the academic andartist-led, non profit gallery sector. This includes the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Art Metropole, Simon Fraser University Galleriesand Or Gallery in Vancouver where she served as Director-Curator from 2017 to 2022. Her independently curated projects include ‘CommonCause: before and beyond the global’ (2018) at Mercer Union, Toronto; ‘Sediment: the archive as a fragmentary base’ (2023-2024) at the Leonard& Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University in Montreal and the University of Toronto Art Museum. In 2022 she co-curated the exhibition and symposium project ‘Ceremony (Burial of an Undead World)’ with Anselm Franke, Elisa Giuliano, Claire Tancons and Zairong Xiang at Haus derKulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin. Ryner is also a writer who has published catalogue and critical essays on Denyse Thomasos, Stan Douglas,Kandis Williams and Michelle Lopez.