Josephine’s is a multi-year research project on the Baker House (1927), its modernist architect Adolf Loos, and its inspiration, the iconic entertainer Josephine Baker. The Baker House is often regarded as an example of Loos’s modernist vision of architectural purity and the concept of the raumplan. Yet it is less often discussed as an exercise in celebrity, as Loos leveraged Baker’s identity to raise his own profile. The concept design for the house, which was never built, ultimately can be understood as a reflection of the workings of the modernist unconscious. Giles and Cruz Rivera, whose research was supported by a 2022 Graham Foundation research grant, will speak about their archival and site research between the US and Europe and contextualize their findings through a discussion of modernist ideologies, racial fantasy, and visibility. They will also share their publication Josephine’s: Prelude, produced to accompany the research exhibition at terminal, Amsterdam, in April 2026.

Daniel Giles is a Black American artist and educator based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His interdisciplinary artistic practice uses methods of appropriation and abstraction to question how power functions within representational systems. Giles’ work takes shape through studio practice as well as collaborative, research-based, and performative approaches, resulting in artworks, publications, and forms of pedagogy. Giles earned an MFA from Northwestern University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently the Course Director of the Piet Zwart Institute Master of Fine Art in Rotterdam.

Sharmyn Cruz Rivera is a Puerto Rican curator and writer based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her curatorial practice seeks to expand the boundaries of exhibition-making to make way for emerging formats of interdisciplinary collaboration, presentation, and dialogue. Cruz Rivera holds an MA in arts administration and policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a dual BA in art history and modern languages from the University of Puerto Rico. She currently serves as Coordinator of Theory of Art, Design and Culture at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.


Image: Daniel Giles, Untitled (Le Tumulte Blanc), 2026. Courtesy the artist