Art in the Wake: Reckoning and Re-membering

60 Cove Street,Portland ME 04101

19 May, 2023

Description

Join us for Art in the Wake: Reckoning and Re-membering! Presented by Indigo Arts Alliance in partnership with the Center for the Study of Global Slavery at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture and Atlantic Black Box. The symposium aims to deeply engage artists and the arts in helping people and communities better understand and grapple with the history and legacies of slavery and forced migration in their lives today.  By providing a platform to discuss and enact how art can be integrated with other forms of research and knowledge-making, Art in the Wake will explore the profound role of creative expression in uncovering buried histories and expanding and creating new archives. Bringing together artists, curators, and historians from across the United States and around the world to engage in dialogue with members of the New England community, this symposium offers a dynamic forum for diverse perspectives centered on reframing the local and global understanding of Blackness - encompassing our past, present, and future. We are convening to interrogate: How can the power of creativity move us toward reconciliation, justice, and grace?The symposium’s presentations, art workshops, and cultural conversations will offer these foundational queries: How can we amplify thought leadership within the African Diaspora to define our own narratives?How do we create, sustain, and nourish spaces of health and healing – in our communities and within ourselves?How do we offer reconstructive and reparative practices and models of engagement as alternatives for the future? How do we foster equitable and inclusive ways of engaging with one another reflective of other language families and cultures that have invested generations of blood, sweat, and tears in the building of this nation and the African diaspora?Presenters include Margaret Brown, Clotilda Descendants (names to come), C. Daniel Dawson, Meadow Dibble, Paul Gardullo, Rachel Elizabeth Harding, Juana Alicia Ruíz Hernández, Alexandra James, Kate McMahon, Ed Johnetta Miller, Gabrielle Miller, Daniel Minter, Marcia Minter, Chris Newell, Johanna Obenda, Meghna Singh, Nyugen Smith, and Gary Tyler. Lunch and Dinner provided by Chef Jordan Benissan. About Partner Organizations:Indigo Arts Alliance (IAA) is an arts incubator in Portland, Maine with a mission to connect Black and Brown artists from around the world with Maine’s artists of African descent through a multidisciplinary artist-in-residency program that embodies a Black-led approach to creativity, community-building, and mentoring. A place where freedom of expression and personal transformation through creativity is encouraged, Indigo Arts Alliance is rooted in two principles: that art is a key resource for healthy human communities that should be cultivated and celebrated; and that artists play a unique role in strengthening our multiracial democracy. Center for the Study of Global Slavery at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) researches and interprets slavery, revealing its deep global connections and impact as well as recognizing the resistance and resilience of people of African descent in making freedom while resisting the dehumanizing practices of slavery, racism, and its afterlives. Through international, innovative, interdisciplinary collaborations the CSGS promotes, expands, and works to change both the research and practices of museums and other public humanities institutions around the history and legacies of racial slavery and the slave trade as well as the freedom-making practices of those who were enslaved and their descendants. Atlantic Black Box (ABB) is a public history project that empowers communities throughout New England to take up the critical work of researching and reckoning with our region’s complicity in the slave trade and our extensive involvement in the global economy of enslavement. This grassroots historical recovery movement is powered by community historians and guided by a broad coalition of scholars, community leaders, educators, archivists, museum professionals, antiracism activists, and artists.