Join MoAD for a curator & artist talk celebrating the opening of the exhibition Unruly Navigations, curated by Key Jo Lee, Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs at MoAD. Artists Nafis M. White, Nadine Natalie Hall, and Oluseye will be in conversation with Key Jo Lee to discuss how artists in this exhibition augment and deepen, and at times, completely refute, conventional accounts of diasporic experience.

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About the Exhibition

Unruly Navigations testifies to the urgent, disorderly, rebellious, and nonlinear movements of people, cultures, ideas, religions, and aesthetics that define diaspora. Whether it is one of Haitian-born ceramicist and painter Morel Doucet's delicate porcelain busts, Vanessa German's provoking multimedia sculptures, or Jamaican sculptor Nadine Natalie Hall's hand-molded paving blocks made of sugar, coconut, water, and peanuts, this exhibition's more than forty artworks and four site-specific installations capture multidimensional trajectories through time, across geographies, and through complex spiritual landscapes. In doing so, they augment and deepen, and at times, completely refute, conventional accounts of diasporic experience which have historically misrepresented, mischaracterized, and misplaced stories from the perspective of the enslaved, the forcibly displaced, or otherwise disenfranchised.

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About the Artists

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‍Nadine Natalie Hall,(@nadinenataliehall) born in Kingston, Jamaica, is a conceptual artist who works in installation art, sculpture, and photography. Functioning as catalysts for social change, Hall’s artworks are multilayered constructions, (auto)biographic, and imbued with symbols connected to the more extensive histories of the black diasporic experience. Hall earned an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Miami, Florida, and a BFA in Textiles and Fiber Arts from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Kingston.

A recipient of many scholarships and awards, including a 2019-2022 Graduate Tuition Scholarship from the University of Miami; the 2019 Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative (DAMLI) Summer Graduate Fellowship from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; the 2020 MFA Summer Fellowship Award in Art, from the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, the 2021-2022 Catalyst Award from Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, Miami Florida, and a 2023 Black Curatorial: Fly Me Out Fund travel grant.

Hall is an artist-in-residence alumna of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator and Fountainhead Residency in Miami, Florida. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, The Institute of Gender and Development Studies – Regional Headquarters, University of the West Indies, Mona, The National Gallery of Jamaica, University of Miami Wynwood Gallery, Bonnier Gallery in Miami, Florida, and the 2022 Kingston Biennial, in Kingston, Jamaica. Numerous private collectors collect her artworks in the US.

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Oluseye, (@olu.seye) (b.1986, London, UK) is a Nigerian-Canadian artist. Using diasporic debris—a term he coined to describe the artifacts and found objects he collects from his travels across The Atlantic—he explores Black being across themes. These transformational objects are recast into sculpture, installation, performance, and photography and their explorations invoke his personal narratives and travels within a broader examination of Black Diasporic cultures, and African spiritual traditions. He has exhibited at The Gardiner Museum, Toronto (2023), The Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2021); The Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queen’s University, Kingston (2021); and The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015). His first permanent public sculpture will be unveiled in Toronto in 2026.

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‍Nafís M. White (@nafis_m_white) is an interdisciplinary, multihyphenate artist whose recent body of works are created from objects commonly found in beauty supply stores, industrial sites and the seemingly limitless horizons of our global and political landscapes. Through weaving, hairdressing, sculpture and installation, White centers the uncanny audacity of self-affirmation and love by means of repetition as a form of change. White is inspired by raw materials and their transformative properties and abilities to tell dynamic stories when in congress. White’s formal training is in sculpture, printmaking and digital media. She uses concept as anchor and medium as message in her work moving within conceptual and durational realms. Community engagement, beauty and the political root deep in White’s work.

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White draws inspiration from the rich Diaspora of experiences and traditions of Black beauty and self care built upon centuries old histories of embodied knowledge that honors, celebrates, and values the innovation, technology and imagination carried through and passed on by the fingertips of Black people. Through play and continuous exploration, White employs her research on the intricate customs of Victorian Hair Weaving and mourning traditions and appropriates them using Black hair, beauty products, and hairstyling techniques where they were never imagined to take up space and esteem. She exaggerates pattern and scale with keen emphasis beholden on colors and textures to draw viewers into her creative process, while simultaneously honoring the resilience and power of a people whose very existence and aesthetics have been the subject of ridicule, persecution and systemic erasure since their harrowing and iniquitous arrival upon these shores.

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White’s work is in numerous private and institutional collections including the RISD Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Newport Art Museum, RISD Fleet Library Special Collections, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Queer Archive Work & Binch Press, and has been exhibited at The de Young Museum, The RISD Museum, National Queer Arts Festival San Francisco, Brown University, New Museum, Goldsmiths University, Autograph ABP, OXO Tower in London among many others.

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White holds an MFA and BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

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White is represented by Cade Tompkins of Cade Tompkins Projects.

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Key Jo Lee is chief of curatorial affairs and public programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. In this role, Lee oversees the strategic direction for the museum’s exhibitions and programs; leads globally on identifying and promoting emerging artists from the African diaspora; and works to expand MoAD’s reach and influence locally, nationally, and internationally. She is responsible for the overall management and execution of the museum’s curatorial vision, including its exhibitions, publications, and public and educational programs, and plays an important role in the organization’s outreach, communications, and digital strategy. Lee has a master’s degree from and is PhD candidate in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University. Her first book, Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking, was published by Yale University Press and The Cleveland Museum of Art in January 2023.

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This program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Unruly Navigations, on view at MoAD from March 27th-September 1st, 2024.

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