dessane lopez cassell
 

Select Writing

 
 

Film + Art Criticism

On Julius Eastman, Black Embodiments Studio

Feats of Defiance: on True/False Film Festival’s 2024 edition, Film Comment

Ilana Harris-Babou’s Needy Machines, Topical Cream

Fun for the Camera: on Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers — Seen, issue 006

Smoke, Mirrors, and Splinters: On Ilana Harris-Babou’s video works — jointly commissioned by Kunsthaus Hamburg and the ICA at UTC

Alvin Ailey, the Icon and Enigma — Hyperallergic

Clutch Your Pearls: Ina Archer’s Cinematic Clapbacks — Hyperallergic

A Poignant Ode to Public Housing: Ayo Akingbade’s No News Today trilogy — Hyperallergic

Noah Davis’s Delightfully Surreal Visions of the Black Mundane — Hyperallergic

Małni—Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore — Film Comment

Interviews + Profiles

Euzhan Palcy on craft, history, and her distinct visual style, Metrograph Journal

Jazmin Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross on Seeking Mavis Beacon, a cyberfeminist film odyssey, MUBI Notebook

How Dweller Charts a Path Through Black Queer Spaces: an interview with Ryan Clarke + S*an D. Henry-Smith, Criterion Current

Misty Copeland on paying it forward and her pivot into filmmaking, Los Angeles Times’s Image Magazine

Sofia Gallisa Muriente: For the Ghosts, Metrograph Journal

Joiri Minaya’s “tropical” interventions, Seen, issue 002

Laura Raicovich on How to Make Museums “Better for More People,” Hyperallergic

Kevin Jerome Everson on Labor, Art, and Film, Hyperallergic

Garrett Bradley on America and Black Cinematic Archives, Hyperallergic

Nuotama Frances Bodomo on Afronauts and Adapting the “Real and Unreal,” Hyperallergic

Kia LaBeija, Hyperallergic

American Artist, Hyperallergic

 
 
 

Other Essays + Reporting

“Word Choice: Who’s your audience here?” in Track Changes: A Handbook for Art Criticism, eds. Mira Dayal and Josephine Heston, New York: Paper Monument, 2023

Amid Displacement, a Caribbean Film Festival Centers Notions of Home”—Behind the scenes at Third Horizon Film Festival— Hyperallergic

Numa Perrier’s Jezebel (On Cam Work and Coming of Age) — MYÜZ Quarterly

A Look Back at Haile Gerima’s Bush MamaMoMA Stories

Catalogue Texts

“Widline Cadet” and “Alina Perez” in Flow States: La Trienal 2024, New York: El Museo del Barrio, 2024.

“Atlas of Grief” in Forms of Errantry, eds. Lakshmi Padmanabhan and Rachel Valinsky, New York: Union Docs, 2024

“Charles Burnett.” In Among Others: Blackness at MoMA, eds. Darby English and Charlotte Barat, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019

“Darius Clark Monroe.” In Whitney Biennial 2019, eds. Rujecko Hockley and Jane Panetta, New York: The Whitney Museum of American Art, 2019

“Leonardo Drew’s Number 74.” In Black Refractions: Selections from the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York: American Federation of Arts: 2019

“Collectivity and Catharsis: Lana Lin’s The Cancer Journals Revisited.” In The 8th Annual BlackStar Film Festival Catalogue, 2019.

“Michael Demps: A Sonic Body,” Fictions, eds. Connie Choi and Hallie Ringle, New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2018

 
 

Find a complete archive of my writing for Hyperallergic here.