Art At Noon

William Villalongo on Where the Black Atlantic meets the Black Mediterranean

Wednesday, April 3, 2024

12:00 - 1:00 PM (online)

Like John Rhoden seventy years before, William Villalongo was awarded a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 2020. Here, Villalongo will detail this opportunity to live, research, and make work in Rome in 2021-22. The fellowship enabled him to create new works for his recent solo exhibition Black Menagerie at Susan Inglett Gallery, which tells a nuanced story about the Black presence in antiquity. Villalongo's research took him from map rooms, flea markets, fountains in Rome to southern Italy and the Giza pyramids in Egypt, to learn more about the Roman Empire's relationship to the African continent. Villalongo will share his revelations about the connections between trade and Black labor, which is visible in Roman mythology and the decorative grotesque, and prominent in Rome’s narrative. 

Image: William Villalongo, Sphinx, 2023 (DETAIL). Acrylic, velvet paper and collage on a wood panel. Courtesy of ©Villalongo Studio LLC

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