On Solitude is a parallel and contemporaneous anthology shadowing Darell Fields’s theoretical treatise, Architecture in Black. The text’s visual artifacts depict the interplay of different sign systems including Black language traditions, visual formalisms, and architecture. This publication is the first time this “other” work, in its entirety, is brought together. The results provide insight to how Black formalisms are simultaneously critical and creative.

Entering On Solitude is to enter the space of Black negation. Its interior is fragmentary, held together by Black consciousness in the form of Black language practices. Black language consciousness, confined to the strict limitations of classical absence—negation—becomes more introspective, more dense, and more formal. It emerges from negation as a momentary projection of Black architectonic space.