Charlotte Kent, PhD

I bring interdisciplinary approaches to my analyses of contemporary art and cultural artifacts, through my background in aesthetics, continental philosophy, and science and technology studies. Digital art has a cultural history, but one too often limited to a near past, situated as derivative of a ubiquitous now. As a visual culture theorist, I am interested in established and emergent genealogies of contemporary art, with an emphasis on digital and transmedia practices.

My research positions the absurd as a tactic for dismantling hegemonic structures, with distinctions from its modernist, avant-garde legacy. The edited collection Contemporary Absurdities, Existential Crises, and Visual Art (Intellect Press, 2024) presents the contributions of artists and scholars whose words and works investigate the absurd as a condition of, a tactic for, and a subject in the contemporary.

Personal bio:

Raised abroad during the Cold War, learning and forgetting languages but making and keeping friends, Charlotte Kent then moved to NYC, which has been her on-and-off home ever since. She was Interim Director of the Andreeva Portrait Academy in Santa Fe, NM, before becoming the Managing Editor and Education Director for Ethis Communications, a publishing company focused on eyecare. This unusual background in science and academic art provoked questions on how practices of looking evolved alongside the cultural attitudes that emerged with “if you see something, say something” and surveillance capitalism. It continues in her interest on the current and historical intersection of art and technology.

Charlotte Kent, PhD. is an arts writer and Associate Professor of Visual Culture, Head of Visual and Critical Studies, Deputy Chair of the Department of Art and Design at Montclair State University. She is an Editor-at-Large for Brooklyn Rail and contributes to numerous arts and culture magazines, ranging from Art Forum to Wired. She is published in renowned academic journals, and speaks internationally. Recent publications include Contemporary Absurdities, Existential Crises, and Visual Art (Intellect Books, 2024) and Midnight Moment: A Decade of Artists in Times Square (Phaidon Press, 2024).

Beyond topical politics, there are a politics to her style. She often interjects unexpected digressions because to mediate is to be situated liminally, like so many mythological tricksters, weaving connections across divides. Introducing a wry humor offers an alternative affective lens on culture and the contemporary, and so undermines tragedy as a superior mode, one that reproduces a classical hierarchy with alienating socio-political consequences.

CV.

• PhD., The Graduate Center, City University of New York

• The Writer’s Institute

• B.A., St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM

• Phillips Academy, Andover

For speaking or writing engagements, contact charlotte@ckent.art