What does it mean to be American? Who gets to be American, and who decides?

Un-American Blackbox seeks bodies of work which address questions of American national identity and cultural belonging for a winter group show. We welcome artworks of diverse media and forms which grapple with what it means to be American in personal, abstract, direct, narrative, and/or conceptual ways. Artists and artworks will be featured in our digital gallery (at unamericanblackbox.org) January 2--January 23, 2021.

Bodies of work may vary in scope, dependent on number, size, duration, and medium of the work. We are open and eager to see what you're making!

More about Un-American Blackbox:
"[We] should be celebrating our ongoing struggles for freedom and not celebrating as if we are free. We should be celebrating our disobedience,
turbulence, insolence, and discontent about inequities and injustices in all forms. We should be celebrating our form of patriotism that they call unpatriotic, our historic struggle to extend power and freedom to every single American.”
— Ibram X. Kendi, The Atlantic, July 2019

Un-American Blackbox is a multi-media creative space for the recalibration of what it means to be American. Ibram X. Kendi’s words root our mission: to center and uplift those Americans the state might label “un-American;” those engaged in the fight to “extend power and freedom to every single American.” Un-American Blackbox celebrates the many diverse and legitimate ways American identity manifests through original artworks, discourse, and community engagement. The Blackbox is a safe space for the consideration, interrogation, and reconstruction of our national identity. Our work is to deconstruct the fissure between “American” and “un-American,” in order to forge a new definition, compassionately representative of the full American population.

Please visit our website to learn more. And, have a look at our Archive for examples of our digital gallery formatting.

With samples of your artwork, please also submit an artist photo, a brief bio, and a brief statement about your work. Send submissions to Ellen Jackson (curator + producer) at [email protected].

Thank you!