This series of dialogues lead up to the 2026 exhibition The Condition of Being Near (CoBN), co-curated by Zairong Xiang, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of Arts (Duke Kunshan University) and Denise Ryner, Andrea B. Laporte Curator (ICA Philadelphia). The exhibition will examine the nuanced conditions and operations of south-south solidarity through the lens of a series of global acupuncture points of Afro-Asian culture, history and relationships.

CoBN invites artists, writers and community organizers to consider the wide breadth of political and social solidarities connecting Black, African, and Asian diasporas across North America, the Caribbean, and Asian and African regions. What can historical and contemporary visual cultures tell us about transracial and trans-regional Afro-Asian “stand-ins”; or networked exchanges built on astute pragmatism, community proximity, or survival economies under colonial and post-colonial re-ordering, marginalization, and erasure?

These dialogues draw together the perspectives of a range of writers, curators and artists to think broadly about known and lesser-known south-south community and regional ecologies, influences, and networks across industry, mass culture, the arts, and political thought.