Loophole of Retreat

The collected contributions from Simone Leigh's 2022 Venice Biennale symposium on Black women's intellectual and creative labor

As a part of the United States Pavilion for the 2022 Venice Biennale (for which she won the Gold Lion), Simone Leigh (born 1967) organized a three-day symposium, "Loophole of Retreat," to take place during the exhibition. The title is drawn from a passage in the 1861 autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, who, for seven years after escaping enslavement, lived in a crawlsp...