Printing Black America: Du Bois’s Data Portraits in the 21st Century
William Villalongo and Shraddha Ramani | Black Homeowners in the States & Territories of the U.S. | 2026 | 4-run screenprint with archival pigment print collage | 28 x 22 in. | Edition of 20 | Printed and published by Graphicstudio, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL | Image courtesy Print Center New York. Photo: Argenis Apolinario
Exhibition on view: SEPTEmber 25 - November 14, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, september 25; 6:30 - 9pm
panel discussion: saturday, september 26; 1 - 2pm
This special exhibition presents the complete print portfolio, and an opportunity to experience all 30 works together for the first time in the Midwest. The publication consists of six thematic portfolios—one of which was published by Highpoint Editions in Minneapolis. The complete project brings together the full scope of artist William Villalongo and urbanist Shraddha Ramani's collaborative reimagining of W.E.B. Du Bois's groundbreaking data visualizations. Seeing the portfolio together highlights the entirety of the project and the connections between its themes, offering a comprehensive portrait of Black life in the 21st century.
Photograph of Exhibit of the American Negroes at the Paris exposition, 1900
In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois organized a series of infographics on the progress of Black peoples after Emancipation to be displayed as part of the American Negro Exhibit in the 1900 Paris Exposition world's fair. Using the still-developing field of data visualization, the American Negro Exhibit worked to upend the conceit of Western superiority and inevitable "progress" of industrialization by rendering in stark relief the dynamic participation of Black peoples in American social and economic life, and their global participation in science, literature, and art.
In Printing Black America, artist William Villalongo and urbanist Shraddha Ramani update and reimagine Du Bois's infographics. Printing Black America: Du Bois's Data Portraits in the 21st Century is a fine art print portfolio based on the project of Du Bois and his team for the contemporary moment. Villalongo and Ramani create new images, or "data portraits," using a range of printmaking techniques, current data, and living projects by Black scholars, social scientists, and activists. This project uses the original data portraits created for the American Negro Exhibit as a springboard for the critical possibilities found at the intersection of art and social science to render portraits of Black life in the 21st century.
To realize the project, Villalongo and Ramani collaborated with printmaking studios across the United States and their communities, with each studio producing one thematic portfolio. Printmaking partners include USF Graphicstudio (Tampa, FL), Powerhouse Arts (Brooklyn, NY), Island Press at Washington University (St. Louis, MO), Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis, MN), Paulson Fontaine Press (Berkeley, CA), and Mullowney Printing Company (Portland, OR). Bringing all six portfolios together offers visitors a unique opportunity to experience the full breadth of the project and the collective work of the artists, scholars, activists, and print studios who made it possible.
About the Artists:
William Villalongo was born in 1975. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art, MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. His figurative paintings, works on paper and sculpture are concerned with representing the Black subject against notions of race and exploring metaphors of mythology and liberation. His curatorial projects – American Beauty at Susan Inglett Gallery in 2013 and Black Pulp! touring nationally between 2016-2018 – explore the intersections of politics, history and art. Villalongo is the recipient of the prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptor's Grant, and was the 2022 Jules Guerin & Harold M. English Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Art. His work is included in several notable collections including the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Whitney Museum of American Art and Princeton University Art Museum and El Museo del Barrio. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, The New Yorker and the New York Times. The artist is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, New York and is an Associate Professor at The Cooper Union School of Art.
Shraddha Ramani is an urbanist and researcher based in Brooklyn, NY. She uses data visualization and mapmaking as tools to make cities more resilient and equitable. Her work is centered around democratizing data to better equip communities to make informed decisions about their futures. She worked in multiple capacities in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department at New York City Emergency Management, finishing as the Director of the GIS Data Center. In this role she directed a team to make data-driven decisions for emergency planning, response, recovery, and mitigation. In earlier roles she developed online applications to help the public visualize and understand natural hazard risks in their communities. Previously, she worked on the development of the Future City Lab exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. Shraddha Ramani is from Bangalore, India and her work is heavily informed by her own immigrant experience. She has participated in planning projects in India and Brazil and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. She has a Master's degree in Urban Planning from Columbia University, and a BA in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College.
PANEL DISCUSSION: Saturday, September 26 from 1-2 PM
Join artist William Villalongo and urbanist Shraddha Ramani along with multidisciplinary mixed-media artist and archivist Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski in our gallery to reflect on the ideas, research, collaborations, and creative processes that shaped the work.
Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski is an artist, archivist, and researcher whose practice explores the intersections of self-archiving, curatorial practice, and artistic production. Her relationship to surface design and screen printing is embedded within an ongoing collaborative practice with printmaker Aida Wilde, through which archival research, feminist organising, graphic language, and social commentary are brought together.
Their collaborations include Empowered Printwork, developed through the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, which brought historic feminist posters into dialogue with newly produced screenprints and led to the Sisters in Print finding aid and postcard; DARK ENERGY: Feminist Organizing, Working Collectively (2019); 20/20: A Brief Survey (2021); and INVENTORY: Performing the Archive (2025). Their shared practice demonstrates how screen printing can operate not only as a medium of visual production, but as a way of activating archives, circulating ideas, and building collective histories.
Sowinski has also contributed research on the archival legacy of See Red Women’s Workshop, further connecting feminist print culture, collective organising, and archival practice. Her collaborative print practice includes Notes from a Phantom, a screen-printed response developed with Wilde during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the limited-edition screenprint produced with Wilde for Remember to Exhale, a sound and meditation work created with Ain Bailey as part of Desperate Living C—19, commissioned by Studio Voltaire.
Sowinski is also an award-winning curator and writer. In 2025, she received both Association for Art History Curatorial Prizes for Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life (Thames & Hudson, 2024), developed from her doctoral research. Her research, writing, and photography have appeared in Feminist Review, British Art Studies, Tate Etc., Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, Hyperallergic, and MN Artists.
