The title of this project references Stuart Hall’s memoir, Familiar Strangers and encapsulates the experience many artists have when portraying family members they have never met but feel like they know through photographs. Drawing from Tina Campt’s definition of the haptic–how viewers touch or are touched by family photos–I look to Black artists’ uses of photos to express their relationship to themes of family, diaspora, memory, and history. How do Black artists use hapticity and embodiment to engage with family photos and produce alternative ways of conceptualizing identity? How do they view family photos as sites of memory activation? Why and when have these artists returned to family photos as source material?  This focus on hapticity reveals how Black visual artists recreate, re-enact, and revise family photos in their work to produce micro-histories that might otherwise be lost. I analyze artist statements, arts and culture literature, and academic articles to identify individual artists’ approaches to family archives. The featured 19 artists span the African diaspora, and I use Safia Elhillo’s home is not a country as a framework to situate the socio-political contexts of their work, which include the legacy of transatlantic slavery, transnational migration, diaspora, colonialism, racial apartheid. Many of the artists have gained significant attention as they portray family history and collective memory in their practice. This work can guide future exhibitions and continue the ongoing conversation on family photography in Black visual art.

Most cultures have some aspect of puppetry from history, ranging from single puppeteers to three expert manipulators using one doll to express human emotions, but Vietnamese water puppetry, or Múa rối nước, has been a staple of Viet Nam’s culture since it was introduced by the Chinese thousands of years ago. Performers standing waist deep in water (originally rice paddies) use bamboo sticks to manipulate vividly painted puppets to entertain the public and tell legends through this aquatic method. It is estimated to be over 1000 years old in Viet Nam alone. Given China was the largest occupier for centuries, Vietnam was once a protectorate under ancient China. Current assumptions are that Chinese occupiers brought teachings of the puppeteering craft and passed their knowledge onto northern villagers, and after the cultural influence had faded as occupation was replaced by Vietnamese nationalism, the culture of retelling history via water puppets transformed into a uniquely Vietnamese tradition. Each puppeteer would carve and control their own puppet, passing the knowledge to the next generation through self-training and shared community. Through my close readings of live and recorded Múa rối nước, and by examining others' writings about this practice's evolution throughout history as well as local reception, I will seek to answer why such a unique form of theatre has gone unnoticed and under-appreciated in our modern era of spectacle. And with tourism already being a primary draw to Viet Nam, how can those working on Múa rối nước harness its potential for global recognition?

The humble toilet, whose sole function is to transport waste away from us, is a machine. This is how the U.S. government wants us to view immigrants right now, as human waste to be discarded. Not as individuals with loved ones, or stories, or a heartbeat. The machine that facilitates these unruly acts of human departure, has a name: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE frames this act of hate as “disposing of the bad guys”. There has been a massive increase of individuals being deported without even so much as due process of law. ICE is a machine that acts as the judge, the jury, and the executioner. Mahmoud Khalil, a student with legal green card status, was detained in March and deported to a prison out of state and away from his legal team. Mahmoud was not given any trial before being unlawfully imprisoned, just flushed away. Mahmoud and his case are well known, but there are more cases like his every day. As you read this, the federal government is attacking UW’s own international students regarding the legality of their visas, making their current legal standing unclear. My painting aims to protest against these governmental threats and acts of terrorism. The toilet, a disarming appliance that everyone in this audience will be familiar with, is here reframed. Who decides what is waste? Who gets to pull the chain? Can we stop them? While the deeper message of my painting might not be obvious at first glance, I hope that the alien and inhuman shape will captivate individuals enough to read my statement and to learn that this toilet is not just a toilet. What can we do about this inhuman machine?

The Bed Trick, a recent play by Keiko Green, premiered at Seattle Shakespeare Company in Spring of 2024. It is a meta adaptation of William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well and is named for a narrative trope, the bed trick, that features prominently in Shakespeare’s play. In her play, Green deconstructs and reworks the titular narrative device and engages metatextually with All’s Well That Ends Well to examine the themes of consent, honesty, loyalty, and friendship. Green uses a variety of adaptive strategies to examine the ethical holes in All’s Well That Ends Well. Rather than directly adapting her source, she uses it as a jumping off point for her own story, and warps the structure of the trope of the bed trick to engage with current socio-political conversations around consent, rape, sex, and the boundaries thereof. I attended a performance of The Bed Trick toward the end of its first run, and it fascinated me so much that, four months later, I made it the focus of a research project for an adaptation studies class. In addition to utilizing my first-hand knowledge of play, I also accessed the primary text through the New Play Exchange, as it is a new play unavailable in libraries or bookstores. In my presentation, after briefly summarizing All’s Well That Ends Well and outlining the basic structure of the bed trick, I will walk through my original research of Green’s play, examining her various mutations of the bed trick, the ways that she engages metatextually with All’s Well That Ends Well, and the adaptive strategies she uses. The Bed Trick is a fascinating example of meta-adaptation and a highly contemporary and socially engaged piece. It is well-worth an exploration to analyze its purpose and structure, and adds greatly to discussion of theatrical adaptation.