Full Article by Camilla Cook

IN 2005, WHILE IN RESIDENCY at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, artists Jina Valentine and Heather Hart created Black Lunch Table in an effort to address the absence of black visual artists in the art historical canons.

“We decided to make something of a performance where all the black students at the residency were to sit together for lunch one day,” says Valentine. “We came to lunch and talked about the experience of self-segregation and that phenomenon in relation to high school and college lunch rooms, but then also how that translates from groups out into the professional world.”