Crystal Z Campbell | Public Lecture Series at WashU’s Sam Fox School

Join the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis on Oct. 4 for a free public lecture from Crystal Z Campbell, the Sam Fox School’s Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow.

A multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer, Campbell’s creative research centers public secrets and the underloved, reflected in an archive-driven practice. Informed by rumor and anti-institutional forms of historical transmission alongside gaps in archival repositories and recorded histories, Campbell’s work lends attention to events, places, and people that have been underacknowledged. Campbell’s works on Henrietta Lacks — a Black woman whose cells were taken without consent and became the backbone of the biotech industry via the first immortal cell line — reflect Campbell’s interest in the intersections of perception and the optics of historical transmission. Intrigued by whispers, epigenetics, social and spatial histories, and embodiment as an archival form, Campbell is most known for time-based installations that combine archival traces, strategic opacity, abstraction, and the architectural and site histories of each location.

Lecture will be in Steinberg Hall. Free parking available in the East End Garage beginning at 5:00 p.m. Enter the garage from Forsyth Boulevard or Forest Park Parkway.

This lecture is the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow Lecture, part of the Public Lecture Series hosted by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

Image: Ode to the Underloved (featuring REVOLVER), Film Installation at Artists Space, 2023, photo by Destiny Mata