Taking Stakes in the Unknown

In 2001, Freestyle, a survey exhibition curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem, introduced both a young generation of artists of African descent and the ambitious yet knowingly opaque term post-black to a pre 9-11 and pre-Obama world. In Taking Stakes in the Unknown, Nana Adusei-Poku contextualizes the term post-black in its socio-historical and cultural context. Whilst exploring its present legacy and past potential, she examines works by artists who were defined as part of the post-black generation: Mark Bradford, Leslie Hewitt, Mickalene Thomas and Hank Willis Thomas - and, by expanding the scope of the definition, the Black German artist Philip Metz.

Nana Adusei-Poku (PhD) is a Senior Academic Advisor and Luma Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Studies and Contemporary Art at Bard College. She received her PhD from Humboldt University Berlin. Her main research interests are cultural shifts and how they articulate themselves through the intersections of art, politics, and popular culture; artistic productions from the Black diasporas and critical pedagogy in relationship to decolonial aesthetics. She has articulated these interests through her academic work, the development of performative Lectures & Workshops as well as curatorial projects. Her articles have been published in Nka- Journal of Contemporary African Art, eflux, Kunstforum International, Flashart!, L'Internationale, multidudes, Darkmatter, Afterall and Yale Theater Magazine a.o. and translated into English, German, Portuguese, French and Swedish.