Join writer Anaїs Duplan for a multi-session, seminar-style series in our galleries to explore the concepts of privilege and power in contemporary art through reading short texts, writing in response to exhibitions, and discussion.

This series focuses on exhibitions by Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) identifying artists at MASS MoCA, who explore the concepts of privilege and power in some form. Duplan poses the question: “Power is a big part of political and artistic discourse, but can feel very abstract; what does it mean?” Each session will help to understand and assess how power manifests in each exhibition.

Participants can register for a single event or the entire series. Registration includes admission to the event and exhibition galleries, and copies of two books.

Book titles to explore for this series include:
Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown
Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben

Multi-session on Saturdays:
October 25, 2025: Jimena Sarno: Rhapsody
January 31, 2026: Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream…
April 4, 2026: Jeffrey Gibson: POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT
July 11, 2026: Zora J Murff: RACE/HUSTLE

About the Artist:
Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of the book I NEED MUSIC (Action Books, 2021), a book of essays; Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection; Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016); and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). He is a professor of postcolonial literature at Bennington College, and has taught poetry at The New School, Columbia University, and Sarah Lawrence College, among others.

As an independent curator, he has facilitated curatorial projects in Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, and Reykjavík. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in 2021 received a Marian Goodman fellowship from Independent Curators International for his research on Black experimental documentary.

Duplan is the recipient of the 2021 QUEER|ART|PRIZE for Recent Work, and a 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction. He was also awarded a Black Visionaries Award by Instagram and the Brooklyn Museum in 2022. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization, Public Space One.

Photo: Elias Williams