WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Thursday, Oct. 27, at 5 p.m., Tsedaye Makonnen, the Futures Fellow in the Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program, joins Nikki A. Greene, associate professor of art at Wellesley College, in a conversation examining feminism and the transhistorical forced migration of Black communities across the globe.

The conversation explores Makonnen’s studio, curatorial, and research-based practice, and how it threads together her identity as a daughter of Ethiopian immigrants, a Black American woman, a doula, and a mother. This lecture will be held in the Clark’s Conforti Pavilion and is free and open to the public. A reception precedes the program at 4:30 p.m.

Tsedaye Makonnen’s studio practice primarily focuses on feminism and migration. She intends to create a global spiritual network that recalibrates the world’s energy towards something positive. Makonnen is the current recipient of a permanent large-scale public art commission for Providence, Rhode Island. In 2019, she was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and in 2021, her light sculptures were acquired by the Smithsonian for its permanent collection.

Most recently, she performed at the 2022 Venice Biennale for Simone Leigh’s Loophole Retreat. At the Clark, she works on a project that explores how performance art can challenge whiteness, colonialism, and the effects of systemic forms of oppression on migration. Makonnen will exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2023.

The event is free and no registration is required. For more information, visit clarkart.edu/events. A recorded video of this lecture releases on the Clark’s YouTube channel on Nov. 3.

The next Research and Academic Program lecture is Zeynep Çelik Alexander’s “Imperial Data: An Architectural History” on Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 5:30 p.m.