Great Text / Big Questions 2026

Tiffany E. Barber's talk, titled "Undesirability, Excess, and Black Women's Visual Representation" will outline the material and affective implications of internationally-renowned artist Kara Walker’s recent turn to public sculpture. Walker's two anti-monuments, A Subtlety (2014) and Fons Americanus (2019), along with the connections she draws between the rawness of slavery's memory in the US and the UK, depart from the drawings and cut-vinyl tableaux for which she is most known. Connecting two prominent locales within the Black Atlantic world, this turning point in Walker's practice pivots on her unruly manipulations of the Black female form, namely the mammy and the Sable Venus, into a kind of power bottom that forces a distinction between Black women’s creative labors (as artists and caregivers) and art’s capacity to mitigate historical trauma.

Barber is an award-winning scholar, curator, and critic whose portfolio of publications and exhibitions reshapes staid understandings of race, gender, and representation. A sought-after voice in contemporary art, culture, and fashion, her expert commentary spans academic journals, museum exhibitions, acclaimed documentaries, and major media outlets. She blends art history, performance theory, and Black feminist thought in ways that challenge institutions to advance new cultural futures. Barber is Assistant Professor of African American Art at UCLA and author of Undesirability and Her Sisters: Black Women’s Visual Work and the Ethics of Representation (NYU Press, 2025)."

This talk will be followed by a conversation between Tiffany Barber and Portia Malatjie.