An Artist talk with KING COBRA

Co-sponsored by Black Study and the Department of English

Join us on Friday Nov 1 at 11am in SSC 229 for a lecture by & conversation with the profoundly innovative artist, KING COBRA (documented as Doreen Lynette Garner). KING COBRA creates corporeal sculptures to explore methods of colonial torture and diseases spread by White Europeans during the transatlantic slave trade. Often made from silicone, pearls, synthetic hair, urethane foam, staples, steel pins, crystals, glass, and other materials, Cobra‘s sculptures expose the medical malpractice and pathological infirmities experienced by Black women in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. In recent work, Cobra has taken up whiteness. As Amber Musser writes, “Cobra, as a self-described joker, reverses Black objectification and woundedness by ripping apart white flesh and making it into a consumable product—meat. By placing it within the landscape of desire and commodification, Cobra lays bare the consequences of making whiteness not only visible, but material.”
Post-Sharing talk facilitated by Sage Ni’Ja Whitson, Associate Professor and Chair of Black Study