Antawan Byrd, “Being Seen Listening: Photography, Pan-Africanism, and the Public Square”
Department of Art History Colloquium
November 14, 2025
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM America/Chicago
How does photography make acts of listening visible and politically consequential? Drawing from his current book project, Byrd’s talk centers on photographs of midcentury gatherings during decolonization and civil rights struggles. Rooted in art-historical inquiry, he engages a Pan-African archive of images that document practices of attention, encode fraught claims to public space, and circulate models of collective life. The talk explores how acts of public listening have functioned as both aesthetic strategies and instruments of state coercion, with consequences for how we understand political participation and assembly.
Antawan I. Byrd is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Northwestern University and an Associate Curator of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago. His research and teaching focuses on the art and culture of Africa from the late-19th century to the present, investigating histories of entanglement between Africa and the world, especially those mediated by sound technologies, large-scale exhibitions and biennials, the circulation of photography, and theories and practices of Pan-Africanism.
Date posted
Oct 31, 2025
Date updated
Oct 31, 2025