REDISCOVERING BLACK PORTRAITURE, with contributions by Cheryl Finley, Temi Odumosu and Mark Sealy

168pp., colour illus., hardback, Los Angeles, 2023

Contributions include:

"Prologue" by Peter Brathwaite

"Feeling in the Dark: Rediscovering Black portraiture as speculative metadata" by Temi Odumosu

"The Imagined Museum: A conversation about erasure, encounter and entanglement" by Mark Sealy and Peter Brathwaite.

"Encore" by Cheryl Finley.

“Peter Brathwaite’s oeuvre defies neat categorization: Is it art, performance, autobiography, or art historical essay? He has blended these modes to make work that is joyful, original, and poignant. It is important and timely. To restage Black portraiture, from the Domesday Book to Kehinde Wiley, Brathwaite gets inside the lives and worlds of each sitter and brilliantly rediscovers, reclaims, and re-presents Black (art) history for modern audiences. His empathetic performances give agency to the people portrayed and breathe warmth and life into what was previously frozen; he reminds us that Black historical lives matter too.” Lucy Peltz, Head of Collections Displays (Tudor to Regency) and Senior Curator, 18th Century Collections, National Portrait Gallery

“A truly compelling visual feast that reanimates the archives of Black portraiture in the present. Brathwaite brings lost souls back into view in a meditation on Black presence within art’s histories. Accompanied by a moving commentary on his own experiences as what he terms ‘a rare breed’ of Black British opera singer encountering career-long racism, Brathwaite retells narratives of Black historical subjects in order to return dignity and agency to their otherwise so-often ‘submerged lives’.” Professor Dorothy Price FBA, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History, Courtauld Institute of Art