MarkSealy

Creative Conversations: Mark Sealy with Christopher Blay on Photography: Race, Rights, and Representation

Friday, October 7 | 5:30PM

Whitehall Houston Hotel, 2nd Floor

1700 Smith St, Houston, TX 77002

Join Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph ABP and Curator of African Cosmologies: Redux, for a conversation with Houston Museum of African American Art and Culture (HMAAC) Curator, Christopher Blay, on Sealy’s latest publication, Photography: Race, Rights, and Representation (Lawrence & Wishart Limited, 2022), which examines the past, present and future of decolonial visual practices through a series of interviews with artists, essays, and reflections. In addition to their discussion about Sealy’s book, the guests will discuss the Biennial 2022 exhibition, African Cosmologies: Redux at HMAAC. A Q&A and book signing will follow the conversation. Seating is limited and first-come, first-served.

This event is free and open to the public. Seating is very limited. To register for free tickets, visit the link below.

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About the speakers

Christopher Blay is a Liberian-born American artist, writer, and curator, who is currently the Chief Curator of the Houston Museum of African American Culture. Blay was formerly the News Editor at the online art magazine Glasstire from 2019–2021. Blay’s writing was most recently published in the December 2021 issue of Art in America as well as the spring issue of the Nasher Sculpture Center Magazine.

Mark Sealy is interested in the relationships between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been director of London-based photographic arts institution Autograph ABP since 1991. He has produced numerous artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide, including the critically acclaimed exhibition Human Rights Human Wrongs at Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto in 2013 and at The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2015.

Sealy has written for many international photography publications, including Foam Magazine, Aperture and the Independent Newspaper in London. He has written numerous essays for theoretical publications and artist monographs. In 2002, Sealy and professor Stuart Hall co-authored Different, which focused on photography and identity politics. His notable projects include the exhibition Self Evident at Ikon Gallery Birmingham, The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding / Decoding at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, and seminal and celebrated projects on the works of James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Mahtab Hussain, Maud Sulter and Sunil Gupta are just a few of the many artists exhibitions he has curated. He was also the guest curator for Houston FotoFest Biennial 2020 working under the title of African Cosmologies: Photography Time and the Other.

FotoFest Biennial 2022 Media Sponsor:

Glasstire

Image: Mark Sealy Portrait. Photo by Paul Mgapi Sepuya; Cover of Mark Sealy's "Photography: Race Rights and Representation," 2022. Published by Lawrence & Wishart Books, UK.