Designers often talk about the ability of design and design thinking to spark positive change, but it’s just as important to understand how design has been used as a tool to negatively impact culture and community. The Art of Oppression is a new series dedicated to reminding us to view design with a critical eye into the perspective and agenda behind it.
Join us on Tuesday, February 16, at Blue Pit BBQ for our inaugural Blend: The Art of Oppression where Dr. Lori Johnson, Assistant Professor of Art History at Morgan State University, will discuss how design has been used to adversely impact the perceptions and the lives of African Americans. From Jim Crow laws, to redlining, to negative imagery and media portrayals, Dr. Johnson will provide a glimpse into her comprehensive knowledge of the art of oppression.
About Dr. Johnson
Dr. Johnson has a doctorate in art history with a specialty in modern and contemporary art. Her teaching interests are broad and include a comprehensive knowledge of not only modern European and American art, but also the history of landscape and industrial design, modern literature, critical theory and continental philosophy. In her research, Dr. Johnson focuses on the relationship between discourse and cultural practice with an emphasis on how art normalizes the operations of power through the representation of class, race, gender and sexuality.
In the spring of 2014 she published an essay entitled, “A Dwelling Place: Sensing the Poetics of the Everyday in the Work of Pierre Bonnard,” which appears in the critical anthology Heidegger and the Work of Art History published in the spring of 2014 by Ashgate Press. Currently, she is completing an essay on the African-American architect Julian Abele and his designs for Duke University for an anthology entitled From Slave Gardens to Black Wall Street forthcoming this fall by University of North Carolina Press. Dr. Johnson has participated in numerous conferences and symposia both in the United States and abroad including the annual conferences for the Association of Art Historians and the Modernist Studies Association, as well as Documenta.
This event is free.
Blue Pit BBQ is convenient to MTA Bus Routes, and MTA Light Rail stops at Woodberry. Street parking is also available nearby.