Monday May 3, 6:30pm ET
Ina Archer in conversation with Terri Francis
On our website at www.microscopegallery.com/live
Microscope is very pleased to present a live online conversation between artist Ina Archer and author and scholar Terri Francis to be streamed live on Monday May 3rd at 6:30pm ET on our website at www.microscopegallery.com/live in connection with Archer’s participation in Frieze New York at The Shed.
The discussion will revolve around Archer’s work “The Lincoln Film Conspiracy” (2005-2021) inspired by the first all-black movie production house Lincoln Motion Picture Company (1916-1923). The center piece of Archer’s project is a three- channel video work featuring archival footage from the production company’s only surviving film alongside “trailers” for imaginary lost movies directed, performed, and produced by Archer, offering conspiracy theories about the films’ disappearances. The piece, along with “posters” and “movie cards” for the lost movies, are among the works the gallery will be presenting in a solo booth of works by Archer at Frieze New York 2021, which runs from May 5 through May 9th.
Archer’s works — in moving image, installation, collage, and watercolor — throughout the years have frequently drawn attention to stereotypical and degrading representations of African Americans and the “other” in commercial cinema, literature, art, and product branding. Often through the use of irony and humor, Archer re-makes and re-contextualizes images of blackness to address themes of race, race relations, and cultural appropriation.
This event is part of a series of initiatives comprising the tribute to the Vision & Justice Project and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Associate Professor at Harvard University, as organized by Frieze New York. The Vision & Justice Project is dedicated to examining art’s central role in understanding the relationship between race and citizenship in the United States. Rooted in the prescient thinking of Frederick Douglass, and his post-Civil War speech ‘Pictures & Progress’, the project wrestles with the urgent question of how, in a democracy, the foundational right of representation and the right to be recognized justly, has historically—and is still—tied to the work of visual representation in the public realm. This work helps us to expand our visual literacy which in turn could alter the lens through which we see the world. We are pleased to be in support of this research and endeavor, and to be actively involved in this conversation through this “X Dialogue, or exhibition, or by showcasing this work.” For more information please visit www.visionandjustice.org.
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Ina Archer is a visual artist and filmmaker whose work examines the intersections of race/ethnicity, representation, and technology. Her multimedia installations and single-channel works have been shown among others at Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; White Columns, NY; Maysles Cinema, New York, NY; Harvestworks, NY; and The List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge, MA. Archer was a Studio Artist in the Whitney Independent Study program, a NYFA multidisciplinary Fellow, a Creative Capital grantee in film and video, and she has been awarded numerous residencies. She is a Media Conservator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. Archer received a BA in Film/Video from Rhode Island School of Design and an MA in Cinema Studies from NYU. She was born in Paris, France and currently lives and works between Washington DC and Brooklyn, NY.
Terri Francis is the author of Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism. She is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and Director of the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University. Her essays appear in Transition, Salon, and Another Gaze.