The Black Aesthetic is a curatorial collective that critically engages and experiments with a living and evolving archive of Black visual culture. With Black film as a point of departure, we organize screenings, exhibitions, and publications. Through practices of study, resource sharing, and collaboration we advance queer, liberatory, and accessible alternatives to the contemporary art landscape.
JAMAL BATTS
Jamal Batts, PhD is a curator, writer, and scholar. His work considers the relation between black contemporary art, sexuality, and risk. Recently, he curated the 2022 University of Pennsylvania MFA thesis exhibition, Imperative of Struggle. He is currently a Stanford University IDEAL Provostial Fellow in the Department of Art and Art History.
LEILA WEEFUR
Leila Weefur (He/They/She) is an artist, writer, and curator based in Oakland, CA. Through video and installation, their interdisciplinary practice examines the performativity intrinsic to systems of belonging. The work brings together concepts of sensorial memory, abject Blackness, hyper surveillance, and the erotic.
Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including The Wattis Institute, McEvoy Foundation, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, SFMOMA, San Francisco Art Institute, Museum of the African Diaspora, and Smack Mellon. Weefur’s writing has been published in SEEN by BlackStar Productions, Sming Sming Books, Baest Journal, and more.
Weefur is a lecturer at Stanford University.
NAN COLLYMORE
Nan is a writer and an inter-disciplinary artist. She is interested in the body and land, and how the two co-exist. Her work is an attempt at creating a language that re-imagines the body as land and as a corporeal topography. Her recent projects are the publication of Alisha B. Wormsley’s, There are Black People In The Future, Soft Material, and the founding of small publishing house L’Habillement.
RA MALIKA IMHOTEP
Ra Malika Imhotep, ph.d (Ra/They) is a Black feminist writer and performance artist from Atlanta, GA. Their work uses Black vernacular storytelling traditions in tandem with autoethnography and critical reflections on the work of Black feminist cultural workers to explore the relationships between queerness, Black femininities, diaspora, and labor. They are co-convenor with miyuki baker of a spiritual-political education project called The Church of Black feminist Thought. Their poetry, prose, & thoughtfeelings have been published by Scalawag Magazine, Burnaway, New Life Quarterly, Vinyl, Antenna Gallery, and elsewhere. Their debut poetry collection, gossypiin, was published by Red Hen Press in 2022.
The Black Aesthetic was founded in 2016