Visiting artist Alexandra Bell gives a lecture on her Counternarratives project and the large-scale works she is installing on the facades of two campus buildings—the Terrell Main Library and the Allen Memorial Art Museum.  

Since 2016, Bell has been utilizing walls in public locations to mount works that call attention to how issues around race and violence are reported, either subtly or explicitly, in the New York Times. The Brooklyn-based artist, who holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, urges viewers to think critically about the circulation and consumption of news and the politics of the narratives presented.

Counternarratives is presented by the Oberlin College Libraries and the Allen Memorial Art Museum in conjunction with the AMAM exhibition Radically Ordinary: Scenes from Black Life in America Since 1968 and a related symposium, both organized by Andrea Gyorody, Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, the latter together with Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey.

Image:  Béatrice de Gé