Christina Sharpe, professor in the Department of Humanities, has cowritten an article in Hyperallergic with Professor Rinaldo Walcott, Carl V Granger Chair, Africana and American Studies, University at Buffalo. The article discusses South Africa’s Arts and Culture Minister, Gayton McKenzie, cancelling Elegy – a video installation created by Gabrielle Goliath – as the country’s selected entry for the upcoming 61st Venice Biennale. In response, five selection committee members wrote an open letter rejecting this censorship of artistic and cultural expression. The authors discuss the importance of the Elegy installation, and look at other instances of artistic censorship that attempted to erase certain voices within the art world.
Sharpe is a writer, professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities. Her third book Ordinary Notes (2023), was the winner of the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize in Nonfiction and the Hodler Prize and was a Finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Sharpe is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2024), the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize for the Sciences and Humanities (2024), a Windham-Campbell Prize in Nonfiction (2024) and the Killam Prize (2025).
Read the full article in Hyperallergic.