On Solitude
United States
“Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows....” W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks
On Solitude is a parallel and contemporaneous anthology shadowing Darell Fields’ theoretical treatise, Architecture in Black. These visual artifacts depict the interplay of different sign systems including Black language traditions, visual formalisms, and architecture. The exhibition includes pivotal works fulfilling the promise of Black architecture theory since 2000.
These same works represent a series of totemic projections navigating the space of classical absence existing between Blackness and architecture. The projections emancipate Black iconic figures from architectural aesthetic regimes, revealing an underlying Black spatial syntax found in traditional typological traditions.
Entering On Solitude is to enter the space of Black negation and its emerging consciousness.
Darell Wayne Fields, Ph.D.
Darell Fields is a distinguished designer and scholar in the field of race and architecture. He received his Master of Architecture from Harvard GSD and Ph.D. from Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He practices and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Darell has taught design, urbanism, and theory at several universities, including Harvard GSD, California College of the Arts (San Francisco), and the University of California Berkeley. His design/artistic work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art (New York), the Studio Museum in Harlem, the August Wilson Center for African American Culture (Pittsburg), CentralTrak (Dallas), and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco). Darell’s most recent accomplishments include the award-winning Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center at the University of Oregon (in collaboration with Brian Cavanaugh).
Curatorial Design: Darell Fields, Wilcox Design
Exhibition Design and Graphics: Wilcox Design
Exhibition Manager: Kira McDonald
Exhibition Assistants: Ian Ting, Bernardo Guerra, Adrian Silva, Shoshana Torn, Jacqueline Mix
Special thanks to Dean Monica Ponce de Leon and the School of Architecture staff.
Online Viewing
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Visitation Information
Currently, the exhibition is open to Princeton SoA students, faculty, and staff at designated building access hours. The public may view the exhibition virtually until further notice.
