![Kenturah Davis. Contending with Contingency I (detail). 2021. Carbon pencil, pencil, and blind debossing on nine sheets of paper, 132 × 81" (335.3 × 205.7 cm). Printer: [debossing] The Lowercase Printshop, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Pamela and David Hornik](/d/assets/W1siZiIsIjIwMjUvMDcvMjgvNmhsN2xvbmNwaV9TY3JlZW5zaG90XzIwMjVfMDdfMjhfYXRfOS4zMC41NF9BTS5wbmciXSxbInAiLCJjb252ZXJ0IiwiLXF1YWxpdHkgOTAgLXJlc2l6ZSA3NzV4NTI1XiAtZ3Jhdml0eSBDZW50ZXIgLWNyb3AgNzc1eDUyNSswKzAiXV0/Screenshot%202025-07-28%20at%209.30.54%E2%80%AFAM.png?sha=ef6230f611657d2b)
Anaïs Duplan facilitates this Writing Club series on the theme of “opacity,” as defined by Édouard Glissant, focusing on works by Kenturah Davis and Lyle Ashton Harris currently on view in Gallery 209: Objects of Desire. Inspired by Duplan’s own practice, we’ll experiment with writing personal and family narratives through the lens of opacity. This session will take place online via Zoom.
Registration
Register for the virtual session
Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of the books I NEED MUSIC, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture, and Take This Stallion, and the chapbook Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus. He was a 2017–19 joint Public Programs fellow at MoMA and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in 2021 he received a Marian Goodman fellowship from Independent Curators International for his research on Black experimental documentary practice. In 2016 he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One. He is the recipient of the 2021 QUEER|ART|PRIZE for Recent Work and a 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction. Duplan is a professor of postcolonial literature at Bennington College, and has taught poetry at the New School, Columbia University, and Sarah Lawrence College, and others.
About Writing Club
Writing Club, an ongoing program at MoMA, is part of the Museum’s Artful Practices for Well-Being initiative, which offers ideas for connectedness and healing through art.
Accessibility
Seating options include gallery stools, chairs with backs, and gallery benches. Wheelchairs and rollators are available by request at all Museum entrances on a first-come, first-served basis.
Guide dogs and other trained service animals are always welcome.
CART captioning and American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation is available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. Please contact [email protected] to make a request for these accommodations.
Major funding is provided by the Agnes Gund Education Endowment Fund for Public Programs, the Jeanne Thayer Young Scholars Fund, and the Annual Education Fund.