Black Mystery Month, a suite of still-life photographs by Bill Gaskins, are made to engage attention through their unexpected form and content. Black Mystery Month will playfully test cultural and historical aptitudes through selected chapters of American history that disrupt claims of a post-racial America, and guide viewers to lessons on the most durable and mysterious pandemic of the human story beyond the gallery walls.

Points of inspiration for Black Mystery Month are what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr once called "the fierce urgency of now,” the civic and scholarly project of American and African American Studies; the vision and mission of Toni Morrison, the duo of American historian Carter G. Woodson and activist/educator Mary McLeod Bethune, the pioneering television producer Don Cornelius, and the 38th President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford.

Bill Gaskins is Director of the Photography + Media & Society MFA program at MICA. His work explores the myth and realities of American life and the image of African American people through his work in photography, video, and non-fiction writing. He is the author of the groundbreaking monograph, Good & Bad Hair: Photographs by Bill Gaskins, and the inventive short film The Meaning of Hope. Gaskins’ relevance as a contemporary artist has garnered attention through solo and group exhibitions at major venues including the Crocker Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, and The Smithsonian Institution.