On Art and Negativity

Too often it is assumed that the function of art is to reflect, resist, repair, or transcend the world. This talk considers what orientations to the work of art, what modalities of attention or senses of regard, might be opened up in the absence of any such presumption. 

This event is open to the general public and does not require registration (but please note that our seating is limited). It will be followed by a reception in the Piano Lounge, Graham House. 

Please note that this event will no longer be livestreamed.

Rizvana Bradley is associate professor of Film and Media and affiliated faculty in the History of Art and the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. Bradley is the author of Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form (Stanford University Press, 2023), shortlisted for the 2024 MLA Prize for a First Book and named one of the Top Books of 2023 by FRIEZE. Her art criticism has been published in The Yale Review, Artforum, e-flux, Art in America, and Parkett, as well as numerous exhibition catalogs, including for the Serpentine Galleries, the New Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. She serves on the advisory boards of October and Camera Obscura. Bradley has curated a number of academic arts symposia, including events at the British Film Institute, the Serpentine Galleries, the Stedelijk Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Dr Bradley is the John Grace Memorial Philosopher in Residence at Green College for the month of October 2025. Her visit and lecture is co-organized with UBC's Theatre and Film and the Cinema Thinks the World Research Cluster at UBC.