Surrealism and Us: A Symposium

Events will take place throughout the day at the museum, 10am–5pm. Admission to symposium events and the exhibition galleries is free.

The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth presents Surrealism and Us: A Symposium, organized by curator María Elena Ortiz and independent scholar Negarra A. Kudumu, with the support of Maria Barrientos, education administrator at the Modern. Featuring artist's conversations and performances, this symposium is inspired by the themes of the special exhibition, including Suzanne Cesaire’s reflections on the utility of Surrealism as a tool for liberation in Martinique and the broader Caribbean. The Symposium explores artistic production with participating artists and writers, focusing on contemporary Caribbean art, along with notions of Surrealism, Afrosurrealism, and Afrofuturism through a series of discussions, a keynote address, and performance. 

Surrealism and Us: A Symposium is supported in part by the Kent Family Fund and Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, along with promotional support provided by Glasstire.

Artists in Conversation
Museum Auditorium

With Dr. Tiffanny Barber, April Bey, Kim Dacres, Dalton Gata, Jasmine Thomas-Girvan, Negarra A. Kudumu, Ashley Stull Meyers, María Elena Ortiz, and Kenny Rivero, Surrealism and Us: A Symposium generates a space for conversation and discussion about certain themes presented in the exhibition and its accompanying publication. Artists, writers, and curators consider themes on Afrodiasporic spiritualities, resistance, and dreams, among other creative strategies.

Keynote Address
Museum Auditorium

Cole Arthur Riley, creator and writer of Black Liturgies (Convergent Books, 2024), shares their project centered on providing a space for spiritual practice, safety, and community. With prayers, poems, and meditation, Black Liturgies offers storytelling and myth highlighting the role of spirituality in contemporary culture.

Performance
Sculpture Terrace/Exhibition Galleries

Rashida Bumbray presents Run Mary Run (and Us), an intimate site-specific performance of the ring shout—accessed through the architectures of improvisation, surrender, and possession—in pursuit of functional responses to displacement, erasure, and social forgetting. This spiritual dance work considers the harmonic ideas and tonal vocabulary of master ring shouters the McIntosh County Shouters as a point of departure. Featuring Rashida Bumbray, Cecily Bumbray, Malik Bellamy, Ayanna Lee Blue, Lisa E. Harris, Carl Hewitt, and Rachel Schaffran with Jabari Exum (percussion) and Colin Chambers (keys). 

Exhibition
On view through July 28, 2024

Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940, organized by Curator María Elena Ortiz is a thematic exhibition inspired by the history of Surrealism in the Caribbean with connections to notions of the Afrosurreal in the United States. With a global perspective, Surrealism and Us is the first intergenerational show dedicated to Caribbean and African diasporic art presented at the Modern.

Inspired by the essay “1943: Surrealism and Us” by Suzanne Césaire, this exhibition presents over 80 works from the 1940s to the present day, in a wide range of media such as painting, sculpture, drawing, video, and installation. Centered on the intersection of Caribbean aesthetics, Afrosurrealism, and Afrofuturism, this exhibition explores how Caribbean and Black artists interpreted a modernist movement. Artworks framed within a pre-existing history of Black resistance and creativity illustrate how Caribbean and Black artists reinterpreted the European avant-garde for their own purposes.

Opening in 2024, the centennial anniversary of the publication of André Breton’s first Surrealist manifesto, the exhibition rethinks the history of modernism through the lens of Black and diasporic thinking, and in light of contemporary dialogues on Blackness and Caribbean art.

Exhibition catalogue
Surrealism and Us is accompanied by an expansive catalogue featuring over 50 full color plates. Scholarly essays describe the creative and historical links between Afrosurrealist thinking, artistic practice, and Black life in the twentieth century, with contributions from María Elena Ortiz, Dr. Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Negarra A. Kudumu, and Ashley Stull Meyers. In addition, a chronology written by Lindsey Reynolds highlights the historical continuity of these interwoven histories and networks.

About the curator
María Elena Ortiz joined the Modern in 2022; her first exhibition as Curator, Jammie Holmes: Make the Revolution Irresistible, opened in August 2023. Previously, as Curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), she organized exhibitions including Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Caribbean Art, Teresita Fernández: Elemental, American Echo Chamber: José Carlos Martinat, william cordova: now’s the time, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors, Ulla von Brandenburg: It Has a Golden Sun and an Elderly Grey Moon, Firelei Báez: Bloodlines, and Carlos Motta: Histories for the Future, among others. At PAMM, Ortiz founded and spearheaded the Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI)—a curatorial platform dedicated to Caribbean art.