New Social Environment: Arnold Kemp and Sampada Aranke (Online Event)

Fall 2026 exhibiting artist Arnold J. Kemp joins art historian Sampada Aranke for a conversation on Zoom as part of the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment Series. 

In 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brooklyn Rail expanded into digital programming and introduced the New Social Environment (NSE) lunchtime conversation series over Zoom, featuring conversations with artists, poets, musicians, activists, and more, including Doris Salcedo, Henry Threadgill, Joe Bradley, Martin Puryear, Cecily Brown, Etel Adnan, Julie Mehretu, Peter Brook, Yvonne Rainer, Nikki Giovanni, and David Byrne. 

Arnold J. Kemp (American, b. 1968 in Boston) lives and works in Chicago. Recent exhibitions of the artist’s work include To Whom Keeps A Record (2024) at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; Arnold J. Kemp: Three Plays (2024), Human Resources, Los Angeles; Stage (2023), Martos Gallery, New York; Less Like an Object and More Like the Weather (2022), The Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago; False Hydras (2021), JOAN, Los Angeles; and I Could Survive, I Would Survive, I Should Survive (2021), Manetti Shrem Art Museum, the University of California, Davis. He has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in 2021.

Sampada Aranke is an Associate Professor of Art History and Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. Her research interests include performance theories of embodiment, visual culture, and black cultural and aesthetic theory. Her work has been published in e-flux, Artforum, Art Journal, ASAP/J, and October. She has written catalogue essays for Sadie Barnette, Betye Saar, Rashid Johnson, Faith Ringgold, Kambui Olujimi, Sable Elyse Smith, and Zachary Fabri. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions at galleries and museums, including the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis and The Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the recipient of the 2021 Art Journal award for her article Blackouts and Other Visual Escapes.