Based in Los Angeles, the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery (MSRCAS) is a California-incorporated 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The center functions as an archival resource, reading room, and viewing space dedicated to the assembly, analysis, and exhibition of works addressing the enduring impact of Atlantic slavery and antiblackness globally. By maintaining a diverse collection of historical and contemporary materials, MSRCAS facilitates interdisciplinary dialogue at the nexus of contemporary art and Black studies. Its mission supports public programming, curatorial exploration, and theoretical research aimed at deepening the collective understanding of the legacies of slavery.
CONTRIBUTE TO OUR ARCHIVE
SCHEDULE YOUR VISIT
TEAM
RESEARCH COLLECTION SERIES
SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER
1115 E Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, California, USA 90021
Our physical location is coming in 2026!
Programming
Upcoming
Stay tuned!
Past
Grand Opening for the physical location is June 28th, 2026 from 6pm-9pm!
Address: 1115 E Pico Blvd, Los Angeles CA, 90042
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session VI: Black Art & N’est Pas
Saturday, May 16 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session V: Queer Desublimation and Trans Anarchitecture
Saturday, April 25 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Lee Edelman and Jack Halberstam
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session IV: Ab-sens, Lalangue, Pas-Tout: Art and (Self-)Ruin
Saturday, March 28 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Fred Moten and Éric Alliez
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session III: Masochism Beyond Sublimation
Saturday, March 14 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session II (b): Use of Symptoms
March 6 2026
1 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Luke Thurston, Ann Pellegrini, Avgi Saketopoulou
Link to Session Recordings
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session II (a): Use of Symptoms
Saturday, February 28 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Derek Hook, Marcus Coelen, and Jamieson Webster
Link to Session Recordings
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session I: A Psychoanalytic Introduction to the Artist
Saturday January 31 2026
12pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Link to recording
Latent Space
An open conversation led by Boz Garden on the occasion of Coleman Collins’ exhibition at Ehrlich Steinberg
Wednesday October 29 2025
5:30pm
Location: 5540 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90038
The accompanying texts can be found here:
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, 1952
Teju Cole, Tremor, 2023
Book Talk for Patrice D. Douglass’s Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence; joined by Ebony Oldham and Jordan Mulkey
September 21st, 2025
Location: Zoom
Link to Recording
ABOUT US
Boz Deseo Garden
Boz Deseo Garden (b. 1997) is an artist and academic working between Los Angeles and Paris. Garden’s interdisciplinary practice traces a social and intellectual history of literature and aesthetic practices that survey the capacity of art to represent the horrors of racial slavery and/or the suffering of Blackness.
They received their BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, their MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and are currently a Doctoral Student at the University of California, Irvine in the Culture & Theory Program. They are the Founder and Co-Director at the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery in Los Angeles.
Harrison Kinnane Smith
Harrison Kinnane Smith (b. 1997) is an artist whose collaborative work and site-specific interventions critique public institutions and financial systems. He is a Co-Founder of PlaceHolder Gallery, LA, and Affiliated Faculty and Co-Director of the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery.
Photo by Star Montana, courtesy of Los Angeles Nomadic Division.
Zenobia Lee
Zenobia (b. 1996, New York, NY) creates sculptures that search for a clarity residing in a particular object or material. Rooted in the enduring colonial histories of the Caribbean and its diaspora, she considers what becomes of a chaos that reverberates and recycles. Clarity is made more visible within relation to other objects.
Zenobia received her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles (2025) after graduating with a BFA from Oberlin College in Ohio (2018). She is the co-founder of Sucking Salt—a collaborative research project focused on archiving Caribbean architecture and aesthetics, and Affiliated Faculty and Co-Director of the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery.
Photo by Nice Day Photo.
Dylan Lackey
Dylan Lackey (they/them) is a US-based instructor and Doctoral Student in Virginia Commonwealth University's transdisciplinary Media, Art, and Text program. Their research addresses the space between Lacanian psychoanalysis, Black insurgent philosophy, and contemporary queer and trans art theory. Dylan has completed their dissertation which considers the post-war German artist Anselm Kiefer's 2023 visual adaptation of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and the effects of encountering this exhibition alongside new readings of Lacan’s 23rd Seminar. Their existing writing can be found in TOPIA, Culture and Dialogue, Critical Humanities, InVisible Culture, and elsewhere.