zuri arman (they/them) is an ante-anti-genre black studies practitioner, and the founder, editor, and creative director of (de)cypher: dark notes on the culture. Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, they are currently based in New York City while completing their doctorate in Africana Studies at Brown University. zuri’s dissertation project, tentatively entitled Towards A Criteria of Dark Africana, seeks to rupture what they identity as an imperial pattern of thought endemic to western culture called “refortification.” It argues this enlightenment paradigm disciplines the inventive capacities of black creative and intellectual experimentalism. Towards a Criteria of Dark Africana contributes to an emerging intellectual constellation referred to as dark black study/ies that is composed of heretical junior scholars thinking with and through the negativity of black life. zuri’s other scholarly interests include black philosophy and critical theory, cultural theory and criticism, critical gender and sexuality studies, intellectual history, black political thought, and black mysticism. zuri’s prose is forthcoming or featured in the CLR James Journal, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, a special issue of Interviewing the Caribbean ed. by Carole Boyce Davies, Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies (PM Press), Burnaway Magazine of Contemporary Art from the South, Collision Literary Magazine, and Rock the Bells. Pdfs of their scholarship can be found here. Their substack can also be found here.

Under the alias nappymetafysics, zuri’s undisciplined creative practice blends the visual, sonic, and poetic to explore a constellation of insurgent questions without the constraints of the written form and academic market. Their practice orbits matters of origins, radicalism, sexuality, diaspora, and black existentialism with no attempt to arrive at any certain answer. Thus far, their sonic-visual project entitled Capoeira in Church (2020) has been exhibited at the 2024 Providence Biennial for Contemporary Art. This early attempt at ‘bleeding’ deploys absurdism and collage to grapple with the unbearable weight of state repression. zuri recently delivered a lecture-performance at Gallery Gachet in tandem with their 2025 exhibit Act 3: As Visible as Blood. They are currently working on a note-book and accompanying EP using shadow work alchemy and ancestral veneration to remember the immemorable and mourn the unmournable.

In their free time, zuri enjoys correctly guessing others’ astrology signs, rapturous laughter, and asking ecstatic questions to which there is no sens(i/a)ble answer or solution.