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Artist Talk: Ryan Hawk in Conversation with Dylan Rodríguez

Saturday, November 6, 2021

FotoFest presents a conversation between artist Ryan Hawk and writer, professor, and theorist Dylan Rodríguez, held in conjunction with the exhibition In Place of an Index. For their conversation, Hawk and Rodríguez will discuss their research and interest in the aesthetics of whiteness in both images and the social imaginary, histories of racial and colonial violence, and the co-option of historical narratives through social, political, and cultural rhetoric and action. 

Please note this program contains adult language which may not be appropriate for younger audiences. 

About the guests

Ryan Hawk is a visual artist using video, sculpture, and site-specific installation to imagine alternative corporealities and forms of embodiment. Hawk has presented solo exhibitions at Gray Contemporary, Lawndale Art Center, The Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, and The Museum of Human Achievement. His work has also been included in group exhibitions, screenings, and festivals such as Perform Chinatown, Los Angeles; Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn; the Museum of Fine Arts in Nagoya, Japan; Jonathan Hopson Gallery, Houston; and many more. Notable awards include an SMFA Traveling Fellowship, The Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund from the Dallas Museum of Art, and a two-year fellowship with the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Hawk holds a BFA in studio art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an MFA in studio art from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dylan Rodríguez is Professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies. He was named to the inaugural class of Freedom Scholars in 2020 and is President of the American Studies Association (2020-2021). He recently served as the faculty-elected Chair of the UCR Division of the Academic Senate (2016-2020) and as Chair of Ethnic Studies (2009-2016). After completing his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley in 2001, Dylan spent his first sixteen years at UCR in Ethnic Studies before joining Media and Cultural Studies in 2017.

Dylan’s thinking, writing, teaching, and scholarly activist labors address the complexity and normalized proliferation of historical regimes and logics of anti-Black and racial-colonial violence in everyday state, cultural, and social formations. He conceptualizes abolitionist and other forms of movement as part of the historical, collective genius of rebellion, survival, abolition, and radical futurity. What forms of shared creativity emerge from conditions of duress, and how do these insurgencies envision—and enact—transformations of power and community? 

Dylan is the author of three books, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide (Fordham University Press, 2021), Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). He was co-editor of the field-shaping anthology Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke University Press, 2016) and has written in a wide cross-section of scholarly and popular venues, including Social Text, Black Agenda Report, Harvard Law Review, American Quarterly, Radical History Review, Colorlines, The Abolitionist, and Scholar & Feminist Online. He has served as an editor or editorial board member for numerous journals and presses, including the University of California Press, American Quarterly, Journal of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, and the recently founded Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics. 

Dylan is a founding member of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association and Critical Resistance, a national carceral abolitionist organization. He is part of the Abolition Collective and Scholars for Social Justice, and continuously works in and alongside various radical social movements and activist collectives. He has appeared in a variety of broadcast media venues, including programs hosted by Huffington Post Live, The Real News Network, and radio stations in Los Angeles, New York City, the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, Montreal, and Santa Barbara.

Image: Ryan Hawk, impossible erasures (of the impossible), 2020. Tattoo on silicone rubber, synthetic hair; 16 x 16 inches. Courtesy of the artist.