Mendi + Keith Obadike: Artist Talk

Rooted in African-American freedom struggles and Igbo cosmology, The Skeuomorph unfolds as a poetic meditation on technological agency and the myths we encode in our machines. At the center of the exhibition stands BLKBX (BB)—a sculptural object, a "smarter" speaker and a speculative AI entity trained on documents of African American and African Diasporic histories, biographies and philosophies of freedom. Through a multisensory installation featuring reimagined political speeches, archival fragments, and layered sonic environments, the exhibition invites visitors to consider how history reverberates in the present—shaping the voices we amplify, the ones we silence, and the futures we imagine.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Visual Arts Visiting Speaker Series, this event includes panel discussion with Louis Chude-Sokei, Professor and George and Joyce Wein Chair of English and Director of the African American and Black Diaspora Studies Program at Boston University; in addition to recently publishing The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics (2015), Chude-Sokei collaborated with Berlin based electronic artists Mouse on Mars, with whom he produced the album Anarchic Artificial Intelligence (2021). Event moderated by Amy Alexander, Professor of Visual Arts and Gallery QI committee co-chair and Robert Twomey, Assistant Teaching Professor of Visual Arts and Committee Member of the Department of Visual Arts Visiting Speaker Series. Chude-Sokei and Mendi Obadike will participate via Zoom.

The Skeuomorph Exhibition