Opening Reception for Black Body Radiation by Xayvier Haughton

Black Body Radiation is an exhibition that explores the unseen energies, spiritual frequencies, and ancestral knowledge that reside within Black life. Drawing from Obeah and Afro-Caribbean traditions, the exhibition examines the body as a site of memory, transformation, protection, and sacred power. Here, the body is understood not merely as a physical form but as a vessel through which histories, spirits, and cultural knowledge continue to move across generations.

Borrowing its title from the scientific phenomenon of black-body radiation,  the process by which an object absorbs and emits energy, the exhibition reimagines Blackness as a source of illumination rather than absence. The works presented investigate the ways Black bodies radiate presence, carrying traces of ancestral experience that persist despite displacement, colonial violence, and cultural erasure.

Through painting, sculpture, installation, and ritual-inflected practices, Black Body Radiation engages the visible and invisible forces that shape contemporary Black existence. Light, shadow, materiality, and symbolism become…