Dr. John Wilkins identifies as U.S.-Black and Gay. Born in North Carolina, he earned his B.A. from Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster Pennsylvania; his MA in English Literature from the L’Université de Montréal, Canada and his doctorate from Trinity College Dublin’s School of English where he interrogated representations of “Black Gay Male Identity in the African Diaspora”.  ​

Dr. Wilkins has taught on undergraduate and graduate course modules such as “The American Genre”,  “Modernism”, “Post-Colonialism”, and “Romanticism” in Trinity College’s School of English; he has lectured in Trinity College’s Sociology Department on the subject of “Black African Voices in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade”; lectured in UCD’s School of Social Justice on the subject of “Black Male Identity”; lectured in UCD’s Sociology Department on the subject of “Black Activism and Movements in the Black Atlantic”; Dr. Wilkins was a Moderator on Trinity College Dublin’s “Black Identity in the Americas” Conference ; presented at “Sibéil’s Feminist and Gender Network Studies Conference on “Black Gay Male Identity in the African Diaspora”; and also the African Scholars Association Ireland (AFSAI)  Conference on the subject of “The Black Body and White Memory”.

His research interests are the intersections of gender, race, and National identity.  His most recent article, “Give Me Back My N’Gresse!”, connects the Black Lives Matter Movement, Orientalism, and Visual Culture to decry the Shelbourne N’gresse Statues as an inappropriate sign of Irish National Identity.

Dr. Wilkins is an Irish Research Council Enterprise Postdoctoral Fellow working with both IMMA and Trinity College Dublin.

The Otolith Group was founded by artists and theorists Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002. The anatomical entity of the otolith operates as a kind of figurative black box for withholding intention and calculating discrepancy. Articulating the idea of the Otolith with the idea of the Group alludes to the histories of collective practices invented by artists that theorise and theorists that practice art within and beyond the United Kingdom.

Significant solo exhibitions of their work include the touring exhibition Xenogenesis; O Horizon, The Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2018); The Radiant, Art Gallery Miyauchi, Japan (2017); In the Year of the Quiet Sun, Bergen Kunsthall and CASCO Office for Art Design and Theory, Utrecht (2014–2015); Novaya Zemlya, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2014–2015); Medium Earth, REDCAT, Los Angeles (2013); Westfailure, Project 88, Mumbai (2012); Thoughtform, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and MAXXI, Rome (2011–2012); A Long Time Between Suns (Part I), Gasworks, London (2009); and A Long Time Between Suns (Part II), The Showroom, London (2009), for which they were nominated for the Turner Prize in 2010.
See more details here

The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis is curated by Annie Fletcher, Director of IMMA, the exhibition originated at the Van Abbemuseum, the Netherlands, and toured to Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne; Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkove, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Exhibition architecture is by Diogo Passarinho Studio.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major new publication, Xenogenesis, an extensive and comprehensive polyphonic exploration of the work of The Otolith Group. See more details here