The HBO documentary, Black Art: In the Absence of Light, traces the influence of David Driskell’s 1976 exhibition, “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” as well as contributions from Black artists who in most instances works never enter white/main-stream. The film gains part of its name from Theaster Gates quote above, which poignantly asks — given blackness relationship to light’s absence — what might it mean for Black artist to continue to create outside of the white/main-stream light? At the heart of his question is a question that Black scholars for centuries wrestled with; namely, how might we as Black scholars create in ways that are not overdetermined by the white gaze. In these gatherings we will interrogate our own relationships to the white gaze, explore textile traditions of Black art making, and imagine what it might mean for us to create fantastically in the absence of light.