Thursday, March 5, 2026, 6 – 7:30pm EST
2026 Spring Keynote LectureAfterimages: Grieving in Fractured TimeGrief fundamentally fractures time. It situates us simultaneously in time and out of it. It is always deeply personal, yet it is also utterly universal. We experience it as individuals, yet it is also the great equalizer that summons us to face the limits of our mortality and the relationships that sustain us. In her talk, Tina Campt will present selections from her forthcoming book, Afterimages: Grieving in Fractured Time, which tells the story of how writing to art became a survival tactic that helped her grapple with intense experiences of personal grief during a period of pervasive social grievance. Focusing on what she describes as the exemplary psychic, temporal, and sensory structure of grief, the afterimage, her talk will explore how Black contemporary artists create artworks that speak beyond what we see and give expression to the absent presences that constitute some of the most palpable manifestations of grief and mourning.
About Tina CamptTina Campt is a black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art and lead convener of the Practicing Refusal Collective and the Sojourner Project. Her recent scholarship bridges the divide between vernacular image-making in black diasporic communities and the interventions of black contemporary artists in reshaping how we see ourselves and our societies. Her teaching reflects her ongoing interest in exploring the multiple sensory registers of images and the importance of attending to their sonic and haptic registers. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and holds a joint appointment between the Department of Art and Archeaology and the Lewis Center for the Arts.