This talk explores how photography has historically reinforced systems of authority, ownership, and social power while examining how contemporary artist Sophia Giovannitti challenges these structures through conceptual artworks involving contracts, opacity, and participation. It argues that embracing discomfort can help audiences critically rethink artistic labor, representation, and visual culture.

This research explores how people assign historical, emotional, cultural, and social value to musical instruments. Using the famous Pannonica Piano as a case study, it examines how relationships between people and instruments shape meaning, demonstrating that ethnomusicology studies not only music itself but also the human experiences surrounding it.

This research presents Afro-surrealism as a cultural framework for understanding Black lived experience beyond traditional models. By examining concepts such as strategic masking, inherent distortions, and temporal collapse, it demonstrates how alternative perspectives can inform cultural analysis, technology, design, and public history while generating more inclusive and innovative approaches to complex problems.

This research traces the history of Agustín Cárdenas’s sculpture Antillean Couple from Cuba and Paris to the University of Pennsylvania. By examining galleries, collectors, auctions, and institutional acquisitions, it demonstrates how private networks shape artistic value and how public art can illuminate transnational histories, postcolonial identity, and cultural circulation.