Denise Ferreira da Silva: "Tangible Possibility"

ICA Miami welcomes artist and scholar Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva to the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center for a lecture titled “Tangible Possibility.” This free virtual lecture is presented in conjunction with ICA Miami’s Climate + Culture Summer Intensive 2021 semester.
From Ferreira: “In this talk, inspired by experiments on dark matter, I speculate on a framing of sensibility that does not presume the figure of a subject, whose relation with other existents is mediated by mental forms and the knowing apparatus they support. Inspired by the detection apparatus used in dark matter experiments, I reflect on that dimension of existence, in which touch and alteration take place without perception. Taking this apparently contradictory setup, as the basis for a critique of Kant’s presentation of subjectivity at the center of the aesthetic, I assemble the initial components of what I call a material approach to the aesthetic, that is, one that recenters the body, but not as an instrument of knowledge. Instead, it focuses on the body as precisely that which registers how implicancy is a generous and generative descriptor for existence.”
An academic and practicing artist, Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva’s work addresses the ethico-political challenges of the global present. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), A Dívida Impagavel (Oficina da Imaginaçāo Política and Living Commons, 2019), Unpayable Debt (Stenberg/MIT Press, forthcoming) and co-editor (with Paula Chakravartty) of Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Her several articles have been published in leading interdisciplinary journals, such as Social Text, Theory, Culture & Society, Social Identities, PhiloSOPHIA, Griffith Law Review, Theory & Event, The Black Scholar, to name a few. Her artistic works include the films Serpent Rain (2016) and 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), in collaboration with Arjuna Neuman; and the relational art practices Poethical Readings and Sensing Salon, in collaboration with Valentina Desideri. She has exhibited and lectured at major art venues, such as the Pompidou Center (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London, MASP (Sāo Paulo), Guggenheim (New York), and MoMa (New York). She has also written for publications for major art events (Liverpool Biennale, 2017; Sao Paulo Biennale, 2016, Venice Biennale, 2017, and Documenta 14) and published in art venues, such as Canadian Art, Texte Zur Kunst, and e-flux.
The Art + Research Center at ICA Miami is generously supported by the Knight Contemporary Art Fund at The Miami Foundation. For more information, visit icamiami.org/arc.
Stay connected: icamia.org/subscribe
Plan your visit: icamia.org/visit
Watch more on ICA Channel: icamia.org/channel
Membership means more at ICA Miami. Join today for expanded access to a world of innovative art and ideas: icamia.org/support
#icamiami #artresearch #deniseferreiradasilva