Mourning gives loss a creative form, restoring life to a shattered world.
Mourning could animate a new birth, but this doesn’t guarantee a future without vulnerability. Mourning might be a leap in the dark, but it is not a leap into darkness.
Alexander Hirsch, Psyche.
| Cos-Ber-Zam | Né Noya | 4:10 |
via Art Resources Transfer, a nonprofit organization committed to documenting and disseminating artists’ voices and work to the broadest possible public.
Plumbago auriculata Plumbago, Cape Plumbago, Sky flower.
Where the Feeling and Everything is, Glenn Ligon, Zoe Leonard : Available Light, 2014.
Photographs for Purpose is a fundraiser supported by the work of 68 photographers, who have agreed to sell prints of their work to benefit four organizations devoted to racial, economic, and social justice in America. We hope to draw attention to these organizations, their causes, and the role that artists play in this Country.
In support of Equal Justice Initiative, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Southerners on New Ground, and Planned Parenthood.
Organized by Kathryn Harrison and Michael Adno, Photographs for Purpose is inspired by similar efforts like The Sunny Project, Work for Workers, From Hartford With Love and Pictures for Elmhurst.
The sale is live from June 25 until July 31, 2020.
“Untitled (BLCK–We wear the mask)” is part of a series of multimedia works that Miami-based artist Adler Guerrier created in 2007-2008 in the guise of “BLCK”—a fictitious collaborative comprised of artists of color ostensibly based in Miami in the late 1960s.
Guerrier imagines the group’s members living and working amid the warehouses and apartment complexes of Liberty City, a predominantly African American neighborhood that appears in a set of monochromatic photographs that hang on the wall. A monitor on the floor plays vintage video footage, establishing the tumultuous 1960s as the context. Against the wall are black-on-black wood protest signs and collaged prints inscribed with powerful yet hard to read messages jumbled with abstract imagery.
Combining the poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the artist’s own meditations, the signs and the accompanying prints evoke artifacts from an era that brimmed with public demand for radical change, reminiscent of our own moment. #ShareBlackStories
Adler Guerrier. “Untitled (BLCK-We wear the mask),” 2007–08. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase. © Adler Guerrier
PAMM
Installation view from Adler Guerrier : Formulating a Plot, Pérez Art Museum Miami, August 7, 2014 – January 25, 2015. Photo: Courtesy of Miami Fine Art Studio LHOOQ.
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties,Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
Paul Laurence Dunbar
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile,
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, by Hanif Abdurraqib.
… that is the wrong question
Traci K. Smith
Concrete steps toward divestment from policing and investment in community safety via Interrupting Criminalization
Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action is an initiative at the BCRW Social Justice Institute led by researchers Andrea J. Ritchie, Mariame Kaba, and Woods Ervin. The project aims to interrupt and end the the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color for criminalized acts related to public order, poverty, child welfare, drug use, survival and self-defense, including criminalization and incarceration of survivors of violence.
#DefundPolice is a demand to cut funding and resources from police departments and other law enforcement and invest in things that actually make our communities safer: quality, affordable, and accessible housing, universal quality health care, including community-based mental health services, income support to stay safe during the pandemic, safe living wage employment, education, and youth programming. It is rooted in a larger Invest/Divest framework articulated in the Movement for Black Lives’ Vision for Black Lives.
Related : Black Panther Party’s Ten Point Plan.
We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community.
We Want Full Employment For Our People.
We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.
We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.
We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.
…
We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.
We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.
…
We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.
