Coda

Abstract

Coda. Drawn to This Blackness: Writing about the Black body in art requires documenting Black death. The memory of trauma as visualized in castoff baby shoes (Renée Stout’s Point of View), piano keys (Radcliffe Bailey’s Windward Coast), or sugar in art (María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s Alchemy of the Soul) mirrors the memory of loss as reproduced in Emmett Till’s casket portrait, Deana Lawson’s photographs of the family members of the Emanuel Nine, and Sandra Bland’s social media afterlife. Additionally, Alexandria Smith’s exhibition Monuments to an Effigy and the accompanied collaborative performances with singer and composer Liz Gre, At Council; Found Peace, at the Queens Museum of Art in 2019 offer poignant and haunting communal meditations that encompass both the mourning of Black death and the celebration of Black living, a visual aesthetic musicality that elevates Black art.