Mutant Optics: A Conversation

Join artist Lucy Kim for a conversation inspired by her exhibition with law and bioethics scholar Osagie K. Obasogie and dermatology resident physician Linda Oyesiku, moderated by interdisciplinary scholar Temi Odumosu.

Sitting at the intersection of visual culture, histories of science, and medical practice, this conversation will offer an interdisciplinary perspective on the social and cultural construction of race and perception. The point of departure for the conversation are Kim’s large-scale prints made from melanin, the same black and brown pigment that plays a key role in the color of human skin, hair, and eyes. The conversation engages Kim’s use of melanin as a framework to untangle the ways human appearance is subject to mutation in the social imagination, including the false myth of racial hierarchies. The speakers will weave together visual artifacts, storytelling, and scholarship in a dynamic conversation that interrogates the social forces that shape knowledge production and illusions of neutrality.

About the Speakers

Lucy Kim is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received the 2022 Creative Capital Award for her project printing images with bacteria that has been genetically modified to produce melanin. Kim is also a recipient of the 2023 Brother Thomas Fellowship, 2019 Mass Cultural Council Grant, 2017 ICA Boston James and Audrey Foster Prize, 2014 Artadia Award, MacDowell Fellowship, Hermitage Fellowship, and Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship. From 2018 to 2021, she was an artist-in-residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Kim has exhibited her work at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; the Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA; Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, New York, NY; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA; Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore, Saratoga Springs, NY; Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY; among others. She teaches at Boston University, where she works with her scientist colleagues to further develop her experimental technique printing with melanin.

Osagie K. Obasogie is the Haas Distinguished Chair and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law with a joint appointment in the Joint Medical Program and School of Public Health. He is the author of Blinded By Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind (Stanford University Press, 2013), which was awarded the Herbert Jacob Book Prize by the Law & Society Association. He has written essays for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic, and placed scholarly articles with the Harvard Law Review (forthcoming), University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Cornell Law Review, and Virginia Law Review, among others. Obasogie is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. His current work examines the role of science, medicine, and medical professionals in hindering the ability to hold police officers accountable when they use excessive force; analyzes the legacy of the American eugenics movement and its contemporary impact on law, science, medicine, and technology; studies how legal doctrine produces police violence; and exposes the often overlooked limitations of DNA databases when they are used in criminal investigations.

Linda Oyesiku is a senior dermatology resident physician at the University of Washington. She earned a BA in Anthropology and Global Health from Emory University and MPH from Boston University. She was a Peace Corps Master’s International graduate student and served for two years in Mozambique. She has lived and worked as a trilingual researcher in public health and medical anthropology in Guatemala, Costa Rica, South Africa, and Mozambique. After a short career in research and public health, she earned her medical degree from the University of Miami. She is a founding member of the International Alliance for Global Health Dermatology (GLODERM). Her clinical interests include pigmentary & follicular disorders, pediatric, global health, and health equity in dermatology. She is an associate editor for the British Journal of Dermatology in the Global Health and Equity section. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, travel, pickleball, food and visual/performing arts. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Temi Odumosu is an art historian and curator at the University of Washington Information School, who is empowering the next generation of information professionals and technologists by centering imagination, empathy, and wellbeing. She spent a decade working in the Nordic countries interrogating the visual politics and legacies of colonialism and developing reparative memorialization practices in collaboration with contemporary artists, designers, and curators. Examples of this work include the participatory sound installation What Lies Unspoken: Sounding the colonial archive (2017) at the Royal Danish Library and Statens Museum for Kunst; and the exhibition Threshold(s) (2019) at the Center for Art on Migration Politics in Copenhagen. Dr. Odumosu is author of the award-winning book Africans in English Caricature 1769-1819: Black Jokes, White Humour (2017). Building on this work, her current research examines descriptive practices for cultural heritage institutions and is reimagining more ethical ways of representing challenging historical collections online. Recent writing includes her essay “Feeling in the Dark: Rediscovering Black Portraiture as Speculative Metadata” (2023) on Peter Brathwaite’s photographic performances, and the working document “Approaching colonial photographs with care” (2024) for the Digital Benin project.

Generous support for this program is provided by the Imaginative Project Award.

Accessibility

The Henry strives to be a welcoming and accessible space for all visitors. Assisted Listening Devices (ALDs) are available for this program. Live captioning will be available. This program will also be live-streamed with automated captions via YouTube. For additional accessibility information, please visit henryart.org/visit/accessibility or contact Museum Services at 206.221.3850 or [email protected] with questions or needs.

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