Carolyn Jean Martin and Aaron Samuel Mulenga present artistic work and scholarship on articulations of Blackness in the Western visual field.

Black Feminist Creative Traditions as Soundscape

Carolyn Jean Martin is a writer, educator, and artist based in Oakland, California. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute where she earned an MA in the History and Theory of Contemporary Art and an MFA in painting. Her writing practice interrogates the impact of philosophy and aesthetic traditions on the construction of race and identity, with an emphasis on articulations of Blackness in the Western visual field. Carolyn has presented her research at the University of Pretoria, UC Berkeley, and Georgia Southern University among other venues. As a visual artist her multi-media practice explores how identity is constructed and understood within the social lenses of nationality, ethnicity and race, and how these are sustained and/or transformed through the movements of diaspora. Her artwork has appeared in solo and group exhibitions in China, Canada, and various locations in the United States.

Carolyn is Chair of the Arts and Cultural Studies Department and lead faculty of the Art History Program at Berkeley City College in Berkeley, CA. Additionally, she is a PhD candidate and David Driskell Fellow at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, where she is in the final phase of completing her dissertation “Historical Presence and Vernacular Traditions of Black Women Artists Since 1980.”

Aaron Samuel Mulenga, area of study includes contemporary art of Africa, post-colonial theory and the roles that museums play in shaping cultural narratives. Aaron is a multi-disciplined artist with a keen interest in sculptural forms and installation.

The Black Sound Symposium is a 4-day event full of concerts, talks, workshops, screenings, and interdisciplinary dialogue rooted in Black sound and Black sonic space. The symposium aims to create and sustain community; to celebrate curiosity, wonder, disobedience, collaboration, and play in artistic work; to expand anti-racist and activist pedagogy and methodologies in and outside of our institutions; and to honor the long and rich lineages of Black virtuosity that have been diminished and erased from artistic canons and social consciousness.