Afterimages: Grieving in Fractured Time. An Evening with Tina Campt

For the Taft Research Center spring 2026 keynote, Tina Campt will present selections from her forthcoming book, Afterimages: Grieving in Fractured Time, which tells the story of how writing to art became a survival tactic that helped her grapple with intense experiences of personal grief during a period of pervasive social grievance. Focusing on what she describes as the exemplary psychic, temporal, and sensory structure of grief, the afterimage, her talk will explore how Black contemporary artists create artworks that speak beyond what we see and give expression to the absent presences that constitute some of the most palpable manifestations of grief and mourning.

6 pm reception/6:30pm program
Free & open to the public.
Registration required. Click the register link or visit the Taft Center website HERE

Tina Campt is a black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art and lead convener of the Practicing Refusal Collective and the Sojourner Project. Her recent scholarship bridges the divide between vernacular image-making in black diasporic communities and the interventions of black contemporary artists in reshaping how we see ourselves and our societies. Her teaching reflects her ongoing interest in exploring the multiple sensory registers of images and the importance of attending to their sonic and haptic registers. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of Humanities at Princeton University, Director of the Princeton Atelier, and holds a joint appointment between the Department of Art and Archaeology and the Lewis Center for the Arts.

The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati is an intellectually vibrant and nourishing hub for interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations that demonstrate the importance of the humanities and humanistic social sciences in understanding and positively reshaping our world. Learn more about our events and programs online at taft.center/taft or via Instagram (@trc_uc)