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https://moadsf-org.zoom.us/j/84063226364?pwd=wsaZe3D9Xtym5wQxUYRzYyauNdOfBT.1

Passcode: 396874

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Join us for a virtual discussion with UNRULY NAVIGATIONS artists Morel Doucet and M. Scott Johnson in conversation with curator Key Jo Lee.

Curated by Key Jo Lee, chief of curatorial affairs and public programs at MoAD, Unruly Navigations testifies to the urgent, disorderly, rebellious, and nonlinear movements of people, cultures, ideas, religions, and aesthetics that define diaspora.

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Morel Doucet @moreldoucet (Born: 1990) is a Miami-based multidisciplinary artist and arts educator who hails from Haiti. His work utilizes ceramics, illustrations, and prints to discuss the impact of climate gentrification, migration, and displacement affecting Black communities in the African diaspora. Through a contemporary reconfiguration of the Black experience, his work catalogs a powerful record of environmental decay at the intersection of economic inequality, pollution, and policy-making.

Doucet's Emmy-nominated work has been featured and reviewed in numerous publications, including Vogue Mexico, The New York Times, Oxford University Press, Hyperallergic, PBS, White Hot Magazine, Hypebeast, and Ebony Magazine. He graduated from the New World School of the Arts with the Distinguished Dean’s Award for Ceramics. From there, he continued his education at the Maryland Institute College of Art, receiving his BFA in Ceramics with a minor in creative writing and a concentration in illustration. Doucet's work is held in collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Tweed Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, the Plymouth Box Museum, Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, Microsoft, Facebook, and Royal Caribbean.

New York artist M. Scott Johnson @m.scott_johnson (American b. 1968) has carved out a space as one of the most adept sculptors of his generation. The nexus of his practice revives the intuitive process of Direct Carving in Black American expression while investigating the culture's mythologies, ritual, and post-colonial realities. Deeply impacted by his 19-year teaching artist residency at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, NY, Johnson has developed a unique multi-historical vision of contemporary Negro aesthetics.  As an undergraduate student, Johnson was intellectually mentored by acclaimed Black anthropologist, Dr. Warren Perry. Perry was central in his recognition of anthropology as a conduit to map and reclaim dormant visual aesthetics. The essay Characteristics of Negro Expression (1934) by cultural anthropologist, Zora Neal Hurston, provided Johnson his Rosetta Stone.  

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While a member of the organization Operation Crossroads Africa, Johnson’s formal education as a sculptor began in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in 1994. At that time, the country was exhibiting some of the most soulful contemporary stone sculpture in the world. Deeply drawn to the work, Scott explored traditional and contemporary direct sculpting practices guided by local artists.  Johnson’s greatest opportunity came when he was granted an apprenticeship (1996-1999) with internationally recognized sculptor and national hero, Nicholas Mukomberanwa (1940 - 2002). In Mukomberanwa’s studio, Johnson thrived, digesting more than just technique, he battled to decolonize the landscape of his imagination. Driven to expand the harmonics of rhythm and pattern in African American material culture, his work is birthed through a combination of improvisation and atavistic memory. Born and raised in Inkster, MI, M. Scott came of age during the blossoming of Techno music in Detroit, his sculpture is a tangible reflection of those Afrofuturist sonic metaphysics.

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Key Jo Lee @keyjolee 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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