Melaine Ferdinand-King, Ph.D.

**Creating the lovely unexpected through collaboration, cultural commentary, and curation.**

Melaine Ferdinand-King was named 2023 Emerging Curator by the Providence Biennial for Contemporary Art, culminating in the exhibition “Poiesis” at WaterFire Art Center, the first exhibition to highlight Providence metropolitan area street culture, urban design, and experimental arts.

Her academic scholarship has been published in Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute and The National Council for Black Studies Annual Report, among others.

Raised in New Jersey, Melaine earned a B.A. in Sociology from Spelman College, a M.A. in Africana Studies from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in Africana Studies (U.S., Caribbean, Africa) from Brown University.

Her dissertation, “Afrosurrealism and the Art of Black Wayfinding”, is one of the first to explore the aesthetic politics of theorists and artists of the Black surrealist canon.

Melaine is a Providence, Rhode Island-based public scholar, independent curator, and writer who specializes in cultural theory and contemporary art of the Americas and Africa.

Her teaching, programming and research are rooted in a curiosity about the power of cultural production and aesthetic politics to create alternative models for being and seeing in the world.