Wayward Refusals – e-flux Education

Wayward Refusals explores the radical creativity that results from experiences of oppression, marginalization, rejection, and non-belonging. Including painting, sculpture, video, photography, collage and NFT, this exhibition highlights how conscious acts of refusal by minoritarian subjects can become sources of disorderly power that dismantle the status quo. Featured artists develop world-making actions despite ever-present threats of social, legal, and psychological punishments in life under capitalism. They refuse to hide, blend into crowds, or conform to norms. Together, their works embody what Saidiya Hartman describes as “wayward experiments,” celebrating practices of refusal that forefront alternative ways of living. Exhibited artists demonstrate how it is possible to not only survive but thrive within the strangely liberating realms of vulnerability, failure,…