A Black Phoenix Rising Art Experience explores black people’s ways of resisting material and symbolic death in American life and culture. Grounded in the black radical tradition, each of the works have been collaboratively conceived and produced through the power of collective memory and the medium of storytelling. Through artistic expression, the artists subvert the narrative that black people’s only existence is death by transforming the symbolic meanings of death in ways that push back against anti-black racisms.

This exhibition is a creative collaboration of Wesleyan students, Ernesto Cuevas, Jr. and Associate Professor of African American Studies, Science in Society, and Sociology Anthony Hatch. Co-sponsored by the Center for African-American Studies, the Center for the Humanities, and the Center for the Arts' Creative Campus Initiative, made possible with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.