Emma McMath Kennedy

This project examines how blackness and indigeneity have been jointly represented in the contemporary art practices of Black American and Indigenous Australian artists. These artists focus attention on the afterlives of slavery, forced re-education, social death of Black and Native subjects, and the ongoing violence of settler colonialism. This dissertation explores how the artists engage the racialized black and/or indigenous body in visual art and in museums spaces. These contemporary artists illuminate congruent forms of colonial violence enacted upon Black and Indigenous peoples across geographies. This project reveals points of connection and potential solidarities while pushing the field of American Art to think beyond binaries or geographic boundaries.