Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s work reflects on subjectivity and individual identity as forms of self-determination. Whilst her work may be underpinned by an expansive and multivalent repertoire of cultural signifiers borrowing freely from Blackness, healing rituals, flora, texting, acrylic-nails, gold-hoops, carnival culture, they enable her to present and privilege the variance of her own individual experience. As such, her work refuses to be framed by narrow expectations of racial or gendered notions of collective identity and history. Yearwood-Dan’s work has been exhibited internationally and is included in multiple permanent collections. She has participated in a range of fellowships and residencies, including the Palazzo Monti Residency, Brescia, Italy. She lives and works in London.

Amber Jamilla Musser is Professor of English and Africana studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (NYU Press, 2014), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (NYU Press, 2018), and Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (Duke University Press, 2024). Her collaborative projects include co-editing the series Elements in Feminism and Critical Theory for Cambridge University Press, co-editing Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, and co-hosting its accompanying Feminist Keywords Podcast. Her research focuses on the intersections of black feminism, sexuality, and the aesthetic.