From object to objectified: The ongoing precarity of Black bodies in institutional spaces

This article examines the precarity of Black bodies in institutional spaces, particularly the detrimental impact on the career of the Black arts practitioner. Ongoing systemic discrimination within institutional sites, as experienced by Black artists, scholars and curators, can be traced to the problematic historical relationship of the Black body to the exhibitionary complex. The continued performative spectacularization of Blackness in institutional settings, as in the cases of Artists Space in 1979 and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2021, highlights the difficulty for Black professionals invested in decolonial work to unsettle this misrepresentation without the risk of repercussions. In each case study, institutional responses to claims of racial discrimination illuminate their negation of the Black experience and the consequence to Black practitioners of questioning and activating against systemic inequities within these sites. To address the topic in an honest and scholarly manner, this article includes references to histories of colonial violence, as well as examples of harmful racial slurs exacted in response to the concerns of Black practitioners. In so doing, this article is an act of decentring imperialist research methods’ and engages an alternative method for exploring deeply sensitive narratives in a rigid institutional structure.