Reading Redhawks with Jasmine Mahmoud

Reading Redhawks is a new online series dedicated to inspired literature and our Redhawk community. Open to alumni and friends of Seattle U, Reading Redhawks is a book club-style learning opportunity full of engaging content and rich discussion. Look forward to a rotating lineup of topics led by Seattle U faculty, alumni and staff members.

This session features a conversation with Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud, PhD (Assistant Professor, Performing Arts & Arts Leadership) and alumna Ellen McGivern (MFA '19, Arts Leadership). Mahmoud is curator and McGivern is curatorial assistant for "Abstractions of Black Citizenship: African American Art from Saint Louis," a group exhibition of works by Dominic Chambers, Damon Davis, Jen Everett, De Nichols, and Katherine Simóne Reynolds, five Black Saint Louis, MO-based artists.

The exhibition presents painting, photography, mixed-media, works on paper, sculpture, and video. The exhibition was originally scheduled to run at Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University during Spring Quarter 2020. Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, it moved online as a virtual exhibition with continued sponsorship and support from The Hedreen, the Pigott Endowment for the Arts, and Molly Mac, Seattle University Galleries Curator.

This Reading Redhawk event will focus on themes of the exhibition--including abstraction, Blackness, citizenship, and St. Louis, MO--as well as the work of curating amidst the pandemic, and what quesitons, problems, and possibilities have arisen.

Readings:

• Adrienne Edwards, “Blackness in Abstraction,” Art in America, January 2015, 62-69.
• Kevin Quashie, "Introduction," in The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012, 1-10.
• Erica Lehrer and Shelley Ruth Butler, "Curatorial Dreaming in the Age of COVID-19," American Alliance of Museums, 4 May 2020

Interested in hosting a Reading Redhawks session? We would love to hear from you! Please contact Stephanie Jamieson.