Directory

Genevieve Hyacinthe is Associate Professor of History of Art at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Dedicated to D. Soyini Madison’s “loving ethnography,” she views research and writing as critical—yet poetic—heart-felt practice embracing “unfinish” over closed, authoritative perspectives. Her first book, Radical Virtuosity: Ana Mendieta and the Black Atlantic (MIT Press, 2019), cast the Cuban-American artist anew in relation to Mendieta’s construction of land art formats emergent from her imaginary of ritual practices from West Africa and the Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s. A practitioner of Mande and Haitian drum and dance, Genevieve views her primary methodology as Black Atlantic Phenomenology and continually wonders about risk at the intersection of art practice—including writing, research—and abstraction across media.

A sampling of Genevieve’s recent publications includes:

“Earth-kin Precarious and Heroic: La Vaughn Belle’s Crucian Illuminations of Black Atlantic Life,” Caribbean Eco-Aesthetics, ed. Kate Keohane, Daniella King, Giulia Smith, Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK (Fall 2025)

“Erzulie as Process: Carlos Martiel’s Divine Protection | Erzulie como proceso: la protección divina de Carlos Martiel,” Cuerpo: Carlos Martiel, ed. Susanna V. Temkin, El Museo del Barrio (May 2024)

“The Edge of the World is Not the End: On Black Feminine Beingness,” All These Liberations: Women Artists in the Eileen Harris Norton Collection, ed. Taylor Renee Aldridge, New Haven: Yale University Press (Spring 2024)

“Maria Auxiliadora Da Silva: Nossa Mãe Maria of Terriero Life,” The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History, ed. Tatiana Flores, Florencia San Martin, and Charlene Villaseñor Black, Routledge, New York (Fall 2023)

“Black Venus Espiritismo in Ana Mendieta’s Filmworks,” Ana Mendieta: Silhueta em Fogo [exhibition catalogue], ed. Daniela Labra, SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil (Fall 2023)

“Before the Wake: Tracing African Signals within Uncontainable Caribbean Abstraction,” Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today [exhibition catalogue], ed. Carla Acevedo-Yates, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (Fall 2022)

Genevieve is currently completing a manuscript on Black Atlantic Land Art.