liquid blackness, an initiative founded by Georgia State University Distinguished University Professor Alessandra Raengo, has received a $750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation. The three-year funding will support research and programming focused on aesthetic practices in the contemporary arts of the Black diaspora.
Raengo, who serves as principal investigator for the project, will lead efforts to expand liquid blackness’s programs, which have engaged scholars, curators, artists, and the public for over a decade. She will work alongside co-principal investigator Lauren McLeod Cramer from the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.
“liquid blackness’s research on the visual arts of the Black diaspora has demonstrated the presence of Black aesthetic sensibilities in contemporary sonic and visual culture. It has shown how — moving nimbly between filmmaking and installation art, high art and popular culture, art galleries and digital platforms — Black contemporary artists are producing the most consequential visual aesthetics of our times,” Raengo said. “With the Mellon Foundation’s support and liquid blackness’s unique combination of critical, pedagogical and archival interventions, the initiative will build the Black aesthetic fluency and best practices in the study of Black arts and artists necessary to understand their social value in scholarly and other social settings. It is affirming to see that something that began more than a decade ago as a labor of love has found the resources to continue and expand.”
Over the next three years, liquid blackness plans to develop educational tools to enhance its open-access pedagogy; deepen understanding of Black aesthetics within creative industries; create an archive dedicated to present-day Black arts; and broaden its community-focused programming through symposia and study groups.
The Mellon grant will also enable four new positions—research fellow, creative fellow, artist-in-residence, and project manager—to be filled by alumni from Georgia State University’s School of Film, Media & Theatre: Daren Fowler (Ph.D. ’22), Derrick Jones (Ph.D. ’24), Anna Winter (M.F.A. ’25), and Corey Couch (Ph.D. ’25).
Raengo is also editor-in-chief of “liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies” published by Duke University Press. She has authored books on race in visual culture including “On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value” (Dartmouth College Press) and “Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled” (Bloomsbury Press).
For more information about liquid blackness’s activities or history, visit their website.
