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 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 examines how nineteenth-century literature helped shape modern attitudes toward disability. By analysing French realist novels and their connections to public spectacles such as morgues and wax museums, it argues that bodily difference was transformed into entertainment, influencing how contemporary audiences perceive disability and human value.

This research examines dismemberment in early modern drama to explore how cultural systems shape human responses to violence. By analysing plays such as Titus Andronicus, the project argues that fear and disgust are historically conditioned rather than purely instinctive, revealing how societies teach audiences to interpret violent imagery across different historical periods