Black Joy Panel (A conversation on Black Joy)

In conjunction with my solo exhibition, Lavendra (March 25, 2017 - May 7, 2017) at American Medium, I asked that folks join me at the gallery on Sunday, April 23rd at 4pm for a conversation around/on/inspired by Black joy between Caitlin Cherry, Diamond Stingily, Yulan Grant and me.

I Read this text at the beginning: 

Tina Campt, The Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Africana Studies Program at Barnard College said,
"The grammar of Black Feminist Futurity is a performance of a future that hasn't yet happened, but must. It's an attachment to a belief in what should be true, which in turn realizes that aspiration. It's the power to imagine beyond current fact, to envision that which is not but must be. Put another way, it's [...] a striving for the future you want to see."
​
Black joy could, therefore, be a gateway to a new future. Especially if we consider Black joy to be a joy made regardless of, or in an effort to resist, a socio-political climate where Black people live under systemic oppression, surveillance and mortal threat. A climate where Black suicide rates increase because of the seemingly endless attempts to obliterate the Black spirit. To make joy as a Black person, and especially as a Black woman, as many Black women always already do, inside of the racial nightmare that is the post-colonial world, is to make a joy that combats this future, and that possibly protects the hope for something new to come.

Photos below image Caitlin Cherry, Yulan Grant, Diamond Stingily and me (E. Jane)

Thanks to everyone that came. We were unable to record it, but I have plans for the future...

Photo credit: Justin Allen

Photo credit: ser brandon-castro serpas

Artist bios:

​Yulan Grant is a New York based multi-disciplinary artist from Kingston, Jamaica. As a creative positioned between Caribbean and American culture, her work interrogates ideas of identity, notions of power, perceived histories and the entanglements that happens within these topics. Grant is interested in the role that new media plays in artistic practices and the dialogue they hope to create. Grant's recent exhibitions include Paradise Garage in Los Angeles, CA; MoMA PS1 in Queens, NY, Edel Assanti in London, England, GAMeC in Bergamo, Italy among others.

Caitlin Cherry was born in Chicago in 1987; she now lives and works in Brooklyn. In a practice that combines painting, sculpture, and installation with reference to history and present-day politics, she connects diverse categories and methods. Cherry received her MFA from Columbia University in 2012 and graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. She had her debut solo exhibition, titled Hero Safe, in 2013 at the Brooklyn Museum. She has participated in group exhibitions, including Fore, 2012, Studio Museum in Harlem; This is What Sculpture Looks Like, 2014, Postmasters Gallery, New York; Banksy’s Dismaland Bemusement Park, 2015, in the UK; and Object[ed]: Shaping Sculpture in Contemporary Art, 2016, UMOCA in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2016 she completed a residency at The Robert Rauchenberg Foundation in Captiva, Florida.

Diamond Stingily is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn, New York. She has published with Dominica Publishing and shown at Queer Thoughts and Ramiken Crucible.

E. Jane is a Black woman, artist and sound designer born in Bethesda, Maryland in 1990 and currently based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their work is a critical inquiry surrounding softness, safety, futurity, cyberspace and how subjugated bodies navigate media/the media. Their interdisciplinary practice incorporates digital images, video, performance, sound-based and installation works. They have shown work at The Kitchen, MoCADA and MoMA PS1 (as one half of sound duo SCRAAATCH), Various Small Fires (Los Angeles), Little Berlin (Philadelphia), Pelican Bomb (New Orleans), Visual Arts Center (Austin), Gstaad, Switzerland, Edel Assanti and IMT Gallery (London), Bar Babette (Berlin), and all over the internet. In 2015, E. wrote the NOPE manifesto which has recently been published by the Brooklyn-based digital publishers, Codette. A central facet of Jane’s practice lies in their music output as Mhysa, an underground popstar for the cyber resistance. She released the Hivemind EP on NON in early 2016 and was recently listed in Artforum’s “Best of 2016: Music”. Mhysa is currently writing her debut album, Fantasii.