Join us for a conversation and musical performances in the special exhibition gallery Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning. Listen as Jamal Cyrus and B. Brian Foster explore the makings and evolution of Black Mississippi identity, through music, spirituality, Southern vernacular and aesthetics, followed by performances from Mississippi artists Vitamin Cea and DJ Young Venom.
About the Speakers and Artists
Jamal Cyrus was born in 1973 in Houston, where he currently lives and works. He graduated with a BFA from the University of Houston in 2004 and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. In 2005, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine; and in 2010, he was an artist–in-residence at Artpace San Antonio. Cyrus has participated in a wide variety of national and international exhibitions. In addition to his solo career, Cyrus was also a member of the artist collective Otabenga Jones and Associates. Cyrus’s expansive practice explores the evolution of African American identity within Black political movements and the African diaspora.
Brian Foster is an Associate Professor of Sociology. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Foster studies Black community life in the post-Soul (i.e., post-1960’s) United States, with attention to rural communities in the U.S. South. That has translated to a research agenda centered on neighborhood effects, economic development, racial attitudes and “epistemologies,” culture, and placemaking. In his book, I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life, Professor Foster takes his research agenda to the Mississippi Delta. The book follows Black residents in the town of Clarksdale both as they navigate the on-the-ground impacts of substantial demographic restructuring in the Delta region and as they make sense of the town’s attempt to use blues and heritage tourism as a tool to rebuild the town’s economic infrastructure. Along the way, Foster theorizes the “backbeat” as an analytic and interpretive tool for theorizing Black counter-subjectivities (e.g., absence, avoidance, dislike, doubt, dread, exhaustion, skepticism). Professor Foster values collaboration and public sociology. He is the co-editor of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, one of the premier outlets for sociological scholarship focused on race and ethnicity; and he is working with Guggenheim-award-winning photographer Rich Frishman on Ghosts of Segregation, a book project exploring the vestiges of segregation in the vernacular environment of the U.S. Professor Foster’s public writing and award-winning creative work have appeared in local, regional, and national outlets, including Washington Post, CNN, Veranda, Esquire, Bitter Southerner, Gravy, and Oxford Magazine.
Vitamin Cea is one of Mississippi’s most precious lyricists and creatives. As a writer before anything, Cea hangs her hat on a sound rooted in her own experiences, honesty, and optimism. She saturates her melodic bars in stories of lessons and memories just as often as she rhymes about her conflicting disdain and adoration for the world around her.
Phillip Rollins also known as DJ Young Venom’s Mississippi roots have afforded him an ear for great music. Though exposed to blues and R&B at an early age, hip hop caught Young Venom’s attention in high school. Now after DJing for over 10 years he decided to open up OffBeat in Jackson, Ms in 2014 to expand the arts and culture in the state by offering a place to purchase comic books, records, and designer toys. OffBeat also operates as a small venue for music acts and art gallery for young and upcoming minority artists.
