BADGE Lecture Series Opens with Onye Ozuzu
By Chad Eric Smith, Director of Marketing and Communications, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts
The Center for Black Arts, Design and Global Engagement (BADGE) opened its BADGE Lecture Series with a conversation that did more than introduce a speaker; it established a framework for how the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts understands art, research, and the living memory of the African diaspora.
The inaugural lecture featured choreographer, performing artist, and researcher Onye Ozuzu, whose interdisciplinary practice bridges movement, architecture, sound, and emerging technologies. Through a presentation of her ongoing project Space Carcasses, Ozuzu invited the audience into a deeper consideration of how history is archived, accessed, and activated—not only through institutions, but through the body itself.
The BADGE Lecture Series is designed not simply as a series of talks, but as a platform for interdisciplinary inquiry, where artists, scholars, and practitioners engage questions of history, identity, and global cultural exchange. As Ozuzu’s lecture demonstrated, these conversations are as much about method as they are about meaning.
At the core of her work is the idea of the body as archive. Reflecting on her experience entering historic sites tied to the transatlantic slave trade, Ozuzu described moments in which physical sensation preceded intellectual understanding. “The bricks remembered. My body recognized them,” she shared, pointing to the capacity of the body to register histories that are not always formally documented or acknowledged. In this framing, architecture becomes more than structure; it becomes a vessel of memory, capable of being activated through embodied practice. As she explained, “our bodies can read architecture… walls can hum the presence of the once held.”
This approach is deeply connected to Ozuzu’s understanding of diaspora as practice. Drawing from experiences across Lagos, Savannah, Cape Verde, and beyond, she described diaspora not as a fixed identity, but as a lived, relational process shaped by movement, exchange, and shared cultural memory. “People didn’t speak the same languages, but we were all Black, and we were all artists,” she recalled of a gathering in Lagos that brought together creatives from across the diaspora. Her work traces connections between geographically distant sites, revealing continuities across time and space while emphasizing the role of artists in interpreting and extending those connections.
Through Space Carcasses, Ozuzu also advances a model of art as research. The project integrates dance, projection mapping, sound design, and site-based exploration to investigate how the body engages with built environments marked by historical trauma and transformation. Rather than presenting performance as a finished product, the work operates as an ongoing inquiry—one that evolves through travel, collaboration, and embodied experimentation. “We dance these buildings,” she said. “We animate them out of their entrenchments and into a next existence.”
As Dean Raquel Monroe noted during the conversation, the spirit of collaboration and diasporic exchange that shaped Ozuzu’s work directly informed the creation of BADGE itself. “That experience is actually the inspiration for the Center for Black Arts, Design and Global Engagement,” she shared, situating the lecture within a broader institutional vision. For Monroe, the work reflects the kind of inquiry the College is committed to advancing—where artistic practice intersects with research, history, and global cultural exchange.
In this way, the lecture did not stand alone, but functioned as an example of the intellectual and creative ecosystem BADGE is designed to cultivate.
Throughout the discussion, Ozuzu also reflected on process—on the role of improvisation, on the tension between creative freedom and institutional structures, and on the importance of care when engaging sites of historical significance. Her practice incorporates rituals of entry, engagement, and release, recognizing both the creative and emotional dimensions of working in spaces marked by memory. “The environment took care of me,” she reflected, describing the ways in which she grounded herself after working in these spaces.
As the BADGE Lecture Series continues, the conversation initiated by Ozuzu offers a clear direction: to engage art not only as expression, but as a tool for inquiry, connection, and global dialogue.
