Ancestral (After)life in Black Femme Aesthetics

Rashayla Marie Brown (Dr. RMB)

Convenor: Sapphire Meloe Gennai

This contribution draws on Dr. RMB’s dissertation to theorize ancestral (after)life as a method of close looking through Black femme aesthetics. Grounded in Orisha veneration, Buddhist mindfulness, reparations discourse and kinship, it examines how Black femmes have long produced knowledge later extracted as “the archive” in Switzerland, Europe and the US.