Josie Hodson will discuss Black contemporary artists exploring the space of Black sleep, subverting its biopolitical regulation and the lethal expectation of perpetual industry. Artists such as Jennifer Packer, Noah Davis, and House/Full of Blackwomen show us the ways that visual representations of Black sleep can constitute quiet gestures of fugitivity and interiority in a culture that celebrates endurance over rest. Hodson will discuss projects bound by an ethos of collectivity, arguing that the project of transforming the social and political conditions that reproduce Black sleeplessness cannot be pursued in isolation.
 
Josie Roland Hodson is a PhD student in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University, where her interdisciplinary research focuses on Black diaspora aesthetics and notions of Black sociality. Previously, she has worked at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Most recently, her article "Rest Notes: On Black Sleep Aesthetics” appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of October.