The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism

Charles Gaines and Huey Copeland in conversation to discuss the Dancing Foxes Press publication The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism.

February 15, 2025
4-6pm

RSVP

In 1993, at the University of California, Irvine, Charles Gaines and Catherine Lord mounted a category-breaking exhibition of Black artists from different generations, working across Fluxus, Conceptualism, assemblage, photography, and new forms of installation. Challenging the racializing of Black artists’ work, the experimental exhibition confronted the discourse around race difference in the United States by including excerpts of writing by art critics, alongside Gaines’s research related to the reception of the exhibition’s artists in a reading room.

On the 30th anniversary of The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism, Dancing Foxes Press publication reprints the eponymous publication that documented the show, which contained essays by Maurice Berger and Gaines and the transcript of a roundtable that included a range of artists and writers. Reproducing images of the exhibition for the first time in color, this new edition augments the original publication with an essay by poet and scholar Fred Moten; recent conversations between Lord and Gaines, and Fred Moten and Gaines; and a roundtable discussion that echoes the first, moderated and edited by curator Jamillah James and Thomas (T.) Jean Lax.

Artists include: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Renée Green, David Hammons, Ben Patterson, Sandra Rowe, Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, Pat Ward Willams, Fred Wilson

Contributors include: Kemi Adeyemi, Hilton Als, Rhea Anastas, Maurice Berger, Charles Gaines, Malik Gaines, Thelma Golden, Jamillah James, Steffani Jemison, Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, Catherine Lord, Ben Patterson, Will Rawls, Cameron Rowland, Sandra Rowe, Gary Simmons, Cauleen Smith, Pat Ward Williams


Dancing Foxes Press, 2025
Co-published with the Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart and The Brick, Los Angeles
Edited by Rhea Anastas, Charles Gaines, Jamillah James, and Eric Golo Stone.
Text by Rhea Anastas, Maurice Berger, Charles Gaines, Catherine Lord, Fred Moten, et al.
Design by Scott Ponik, with original edition designed by Susan Silton.
184 pages, 40  images, softcover with jacket, 8 1/2 x 11 inches