A screening of of We Were Here – The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe and Q&A session with the film's director Fred Kudjo Kuwornu will be given at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in Gearhart Hall 26.

The art history program in the School of Art, in collaboration with the Honors College and Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences' departments and areas of study, including African and African American studies, the Department of History, medieval and Renaissance studies and the Italian language program in World Languages, Literatures & Cultures, will present the film. The event is free and open to the public.

We Were Here - The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe was exhibited in the Central Pavilion curated by Adriano Pedrosa at the 60ᵗʰ International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale and aims to shed light on the overlooked presence of African and Black individuals in Renaissance Europe, highlighting their depiction in masterpieces by some of the era's most celebrated artists.

Exporing, how they come to Europe? Why were they portrayed? Were they truly all servants or slaves? If the Black faces portrayed in these Renaissance masterpieces could speak, what would they tell us?

After the screening, the audience will be able to engage with the director through a question-and-answer session. Kuwornu is an Afro-Italian and U.S. multi-hyphenate socially engaged artist, filmmaker and scholar based in New York.

His work bridges past and present, exploring identity and race through historical remixing of archival materials. Kuwornu's films have been exhibited at the 2024 60ᵗʰ Venice Art Biennale, Museum of Moving Image in New York, Library of Congress and international film festivals.

All are invited to attend the film screening and hear from the director of We Were Here - The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, Thursday, April 3, at 5:30 p.m. at in the G. David Gearhart Hall room 26.