Data Consciousness: Reframing Blackness in Contemporary Print

Data Consciousness: Reframing Blackness in Contemporary Print is a landmark exhibition that brings together leading Black contemporary artists who use printmaking, sculpture, installation, textile, and video to interrogate the intersections of race, technology, and representation in a data-driven society. Curated by Tiffany E. Barber, the exhibition draws inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness and his pioneering data visualizations, which mapped Black life after Reconstruction and remain foundational to American design history and data science.

Anchoring the exhibition is an expansive, research-based print portfolio by William Villalongo and Shraddha Ramani, titled Printing Black America: Du Bois’s Data Portraits in the 21st Century. This project updates Du Bois’s approach by visualizing contemporary data on Black life, sourced from the 2020 US Census and oral histories, in collaboration with six print publishers nationwide. Other featured artists include Silas Munro, whose multimedia work explores Black modernism and LGBTQ+ perspectives; Kameelah Janan Rasheed, who expands on text-based minimalism; Tahir Hemphill, who merges hip-hop poetics with data visualization; and Julia Mallory, whose video work animates Du Bois’s drawings and her own family history through stop-motion collage.

Together, these artists challenge the surveillance and commodification of data, exposing the biases embedded in algorithmic technologies and reimagining Black creative agency as a force for ethical transformation. Their works subvert conventional systems of measurement and representation, proposing new, more equitable visions of community and care.

The exhibition will be accompanied by robust public programming, including a symposium and a major publication featuring essays and artist conversations. By reframing Black contemporary art as a critical site for understanding digital infrastructures and identity, Data Consciousness offers a timely exploration of how Blackness is both shaped by and resists the pervasive influence of data in the twenty-first century.