This gallery talk will consider the intersection of the visual arts and our collective imagination in creating social change. We’ll examine several works in which Thomas creates a speculative space occupied by the black female body, which is empowered in her portraits with potent agency and intention. Her reversal of roles between voyeur, subject, and place challenge the viewer to consider a future where life imitates art and space opens within space, ad infinitum.
Tosha Stimage is a multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on the structural nature of language in relation to “black” identity and employs coded messages that investigate the societal constructs of race and violence. Currently a visiting assistant professor at Columbus College of Art & Design, she is a founder of The Black Infinity, a collective that aims to support marginalized creative communities. Stimage has exhibited in group and solo shows across the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond and is a recipient of multiple residencies and awards including The Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship Award, Facebook Artist in Residence and Real Time & Space residencies, and an Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship.
