Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This event occurred on January 23, 2026.
Fabiola Jean-Louis’s photographic series "Rewriting History" places Black women into a surreal historical imaginary, sculpting the trappings of European nobility and colonialism onto Black femme bodies. Using paper as a symbol of freedom, she intricately crafts papier mâché period gowns for her subjects, inverting the historical depiction of women of color as disenfranchised, enslaved and unadorned into empowered and elegant portraits. She is joined in conversation by Professor Tiffany Barber to discuss traditions of portraiture and Black aesthetics, historic revisionism and Afrofuturism, in a dialogue about the reparative work of artists and curators alike.
This event is associated with the Getty Scholars Program 2025–2026 Annual Theme, "Repair." Learn more about the program and how to apply: https://www.getty.edu/projects/getty-scholars-program/
Fabiola Jean-Louis (b. 1978, Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is a conceptual artist specializing in paper sculpture, photography and installation. Through self-portraits and elaborate paper costumes, Fabiola crafts powerful narratives that blend Afro Surrealism with the cultural richness of her Haitian heritage. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as the DuSable Museum of African American History, Alan Avery Art Company, and the Andrew Freedman Home. In 2021, Fabiola became the first Haitian female artist commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, debuting in the Afrofuturist Period Room, Before Yesterday We Could Fly. Her upcoming exhibition, Waters of the Abyss, premiered at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in February 2025, and The Chicago Cultural Center in June 2025.
Dr. Tiffany E. Barber, assistant professor in African American art at UCLA, is a prize-winning, internationally-recognized scholar, curator, and critic whose writing and expert commentary appears in top-tier academic journals, popular media outlets, and award-winning documentaries. Her work spans abstraction, dance, fashion, feminism, film, and the ethics of representation, focusing on artists of the Black diaspora working in the United States and the broader Atlantic world. She is the author of Undesirability and Her Sisters: Black Women's Visual Work and the Ethics of Representation (2025).
Learn more about this event: https://www.getty.edu/calendar/rewriting-history-with-fabiola-jean-louis/
______________________________________________________________________
The Getty Research Institute is dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts and their various histories through its expertise, active collecting program, public programs, institutional collaborations, exhibitions, publications, digital services, and residential scholars programs. Its library and special collections of rare materials and digital resources serve an international community of scholars and the interested public. The Research Institute's activities and scholarly resources guide and sustain each other and together provide a unique environment for research, critical inquiry, and scholarly exchange.
Getty Research Institute: https://www.getty.edu/research/
This event occurred on January 23, 2026.
Fabiola Jean-Louis’s photographic series "Rewriting History" places Black women into a surreal historical imaginary, sculpting the trappings of European nobility and colonialism onto Black femme bodies. Using paper as a symbol of freedom, she intricately crafts papier mâché period gowns for her subjects, inverting the historical depiction of women of color as disenfranchised, enslaved and unadorned into empowered and elegant portraits. She is joined in conversation by Professor Tiffany Barber to discuss traditions of portraiture and Black aesthetics, historic revisionism and Afrofuturism, in a dialogue about the reparative work of artists and curators alike.
This event is associated with the Getty Scholars Program 2025–2026 Annual Theme, "Repair." Learn more about the program and how to apply: https://www.getty.edu/projects/getty-scholars-program/
Fabiola Jean-Louis (b. 1978, Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is a conceptual artist specializing in paper sculpture, photography and installation. Through self-portraits and elaborate paper costumes, Fabiola crafts powerful narratives that blend Afro Surrealism with the cultural richness of her Haitian heritage. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as the DuSable Museum of African American History, Alan Avery Art Company, and the Andrew Freedman Home. In 2021, Fabiola became the first Haitian female artist commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, debuting in the Afrofuturist Period Room, Before Yesterday We Could Fly. Her upcoming exhibition, Waters of the Abyss, premiered at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in February 2025, and The Chicago Cultural Center in June 2025.
Dr. Tiffany E. Barber, assistant professor in African American art at UCLA, is a prize-winning, internationally-recognized scholar, curator, and critic whose writing and expert commentary appears in top-tier academic journals, popular media outlets, and award-winning documentaries. Her work spans abstraction, dance, fashion, feminism, film, and the ethics of representation, focusing on artists of the Black diaspora working in the United States and the broader Atlantic world. She is the author of Undesirability and Her Sisters: Black Women's Visual Work and the Ethics of Representation (2025).
Learn more about this event: https://www.getty.edu/calendar/rewriting-history-with-fabiola-jean-louis/
______________________________________________________________________
The Getty Research Institute is dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts and their various histories through its expertise, active collecting program, public programs, institutional collaborations, exhibitions, publications, digital services, and residential scholars programs. Its library and special collections of rare materials and digital resources serve an international community of scholars and the interested public. The Research Institute's activities and scholarly resources guide and sustain each other and together provide a unique environment for research, critical inquiry, and scholarly exchange.
Getty Research Institute: https://www.getty.edu/research/
