A two-part conversation featuring nine Bay Area Black Womxn Artists and Curators about visibility, grief, and our present paradigm shift in culture and practice
To insist upon being seen and heard is an act of resistance. Telling one’s story, recording a community’s legacy, and creating visual representations of one’s ancestry are methods of resisting erasure.
Black communities have been undercounted in the decennial Census for decades, disconnecting them from past generations, and disadvantaging their families, communities, and neighborhoods by depriving them of political representation and funding—for healthcare, food assistance, public transportation, child care and senior centers, schools, housing, and more.
As part of the Art+Action Coalition’s Come To Your Census movement to inspire and mobilize Census participation by all communities, particularly those who have historically been marginalized, Art+Action commissioned the See Black Women Collective to contribute artwork that specifically invites the reader to “see and recognize” Black women’s lives and labor, for their outdoor public media Census campaign. As one pillar of Art+Action’s larger initiative of artist commissions, public programming, community events, exhibitions, and performances, a billboard by the See Black Women Collective—co-founded by Ashara Ekundayo, Angela Hennessy, Leigh Raiford, PhD, Tahirah Rasheed, and Lava Thomas—will be on view in San Francisco at 3rd and Thorton streets from mid-May through June. See Black Women artists Lava Thomas and Angela Hennessy also have artwork featured in Art+Action’s city-wide outdoor campaign, as well as in the coalition’s free open-sourced digital toolkit, which provides communities with creative resources to galvanize their communities to participate in the Census—now live and online through October 31—to claim their fair share of resources and political representation for the next decade.
In their role as a Lead Partner in the Art+Action coalition, YBCA has teamed up with Coalition Partner the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) to host independent curator and arts organizer Ashara Ekundayo in conversation with eight Bay Area Black Womxn artists to talk about visibility, grief, and our present paradigm shift in culture and practice. How do we cite and honor our existence? How do we ensure our labor is acknowledged and our stories are heard for us to receive our fair share—both in civic and artistic arenas? Join us for a two-part conversation that will take place on Tuesday, May 19 and Tuesday, May 26 from 4-5:15pm PST. Participants include Asya Abdrahman, Sydney Cain, Erica Deeman, Angela Hennessy, Tahirah Rashed, Lava Thomas, Sam Vernon, and Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo.
