Isaiah Matthew Wooden’s “Out of Water and Dirt: LaToya Ruby Frazier and Kiyan Williams’ Monumental Acts of Refiguration” will explore how the artists LaToya Ruby Frazier and Kiyan Williams leverage Black feminist and queer aesthetics to memorialize and monumentalize instantiations of Black refusal, inviting reflection on how racial capitalism continues to engender crises.
Isaiah Matthew Wooden is a scholar-artist who writes about contemporary drama, performance, and visual culture. He is the author of Reclaiming Time: Race, Temporality, and Black Expressive Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and a co-editor of Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration (Northwestern University Press, 2020) and August Wilson in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in publications including The Black Scholar, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Arts, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Topics.