In Detroit, Legacy Russell bridges Black art history and digital art
The curator’s groundbreaking exhibition ‘Code Switch’ explores the overlooked intersection of Black artistry and technology across generations
By Colony Little
Apr 30, 2025
‘Avant-garde art doesn’t have anything to do with Black people.’ This dismissive claim – which artist Lorraine O’Grady brilliantly challenged with her 1983 performance piece Art Is… –epitomizes the historical erasure that Legacy Russell’s ambitious exhibition ‘Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art’ seeks to correct. From Tom Lloyd’s programmed light installations that sparked controversy at the Studio Museum in 1968 to contemporary digital practitioners, Russell’s curatorial project reveals a continuous but overlooked lineage of Black technological innovation within experimental art.
Presented by The Kitchen, a New York-based non-profit supporting experimental
practices, the multisite exhibition is mapped across three chronological domains (pre-1960; 1960-1990; 1990-today) and represents a decade of Russell’s research into what she calls ‘networked Blackness.’ The first part of the exhibition was an archival presentation at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; the second is a contemporary group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).
Art Basel spoke with Russell about the 40-plus contemporary artists selected for the groundbreaking MOCAD show, its strategic location in Detroit, and how these artists redefine the avant-garde through Black technological practices. ( … )