As we enter 2024 and the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr weekend commemorations, please join us for the opening of Perspectives in Black: Emerging Visions, Sam x Elijah: Making Space x Taking Space.

This dynamic exhibition of up-and-coming artists puts the work of Sam Modder and Elijah Hamilton-Wray in direct conversation as they contemplate the Black portrait and Black form through space, place and time. Not bound by temporal or spatial limitations, Modder’s large scale intricately inked and digital figures run, leap and take flight in mythical worlds; while the imaginative realism of Hamilton-Wray’s oil self-portraits fall, spin and float through vast backdrops. In the art of both, hair serves as a prominent connective motif. Modder’s “unruly” tresses take on a life of their own in the tales they weave, while the many lively locks in Hamilton-Wray’s paintings provocatively frame joy, surprise and desire. Sam’s images in black and white, and Elijah’s in vibrant colors invite interpretations of what is in plain view and what is in the void. Oscillating between the surreal and reality, Modder and Hamilton-Wray’s art expands the imaginary of experiences, identities and futures of Black life in the diaspora.

Sponsors: Residential College in the Arts and Humanities

Office for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion

Timnick Chair in the Humanities in the College of Arts & Letters

Department of Art, Art History and Design

Contact: Tama Hamilton-Wray, Associate Professor

Residential College in the Arts and Humanities

Hamil136@msu.edu 517-505-3497