An event with Contemporary And (C&) on the occasion of the magazine’s 10th anniversary.
This event began with a poetic reflection on the notion of Africa and the Global Diaspora by artivist and experimental poet, Mia Harrison. During the following panel, Margaret Morton, Director Creativity and Free Expression, Ford Foundation, Aldeide Delgado, curator and founding director WOPHA: Women Photographers International Archive, and Enos Nyamor, art critic, Akademie Schloss Solitude alumna, engaged in a conversation about how the vigor and endless connections of Black perspectives are empowering and enabling a change of the narration of contemporary art.
Moderated by C&’s co-founder Yvette Mutumba. With performances by Mia Harrison and Steven Baboun, founder and creative director of the creative house, Studio Baboun.
During the event, C&’s latest print issue on the topic of “Black and Indigenous Ecologies“ was launched and distributed for free, and the latest C& Artist Edition by Agnes Waruguru was on display.
Photos: Gili Benita
C& is a dynamic space featuring and linking the important, multi-layered work by cultural producers from Africa and the Global Diaspora online, offline and in-between. With offices in Berlin and Nairobi, and a global network of voices spanning all continents, C& brings together trans-Atlantic perspectives in the most various ways.
The evening was facilitated in partnership with the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Mia Harrison interrogates the ways that disenfranchised communities can heal individual, communal, and societal trauma by creating works that live in between the worlds of art and science. This »third way« mixes unconventional methods (dreams, rituals) and science (ethnography, geography, psychoanalysis) to dream new potential ways of being. This is done through experimental interviews, reportage, continued conversations, and the like. She strives to create generative pieces that allow the works of the artist to have a second breath outside of the confinements of an exhibition.
Margaret Morton is the director of the Creativity and Free Expression team, and has supported grantmaking in the arts and other forms of cultural expression. Margaret joined the foundation in 2015. Previously, she was deputy commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, where she oversaw funding for arts and cultural program activities and capital infrastructure. She also served as the department’s general counsel, in which capacity she devised new frameworks for grant programs, designed development resources to support arts administrators, and implemented a new model for addressing the affordability of space for artists. In addition, she guided large-scale capital funding initiatives for cultural institutions, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and BRIC Arts/Media Center. Prior to her work in the arts and cultural sector, Margaret served as counsel to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she helped enact civil rights legislation and worked on immigration reform and judicial nominations. She also managed education, labor relations, and the equal employment opportunity portfolio for the New York State court system.
Enos Nyamor is an art-writer and cultural critic based in New York City. He is also a former participant at the C& Critical Writing Workshop in Nairobi, a former Akademie Schloss Solitude fellow, and a MFA Art-writing candidate at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. He is currently working on a collection of essays on Digital Arts from Africa.
Aldeide Delgado is a Cuban-born, Miami-based independent Latinx art historian and curator, founder & director of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). She has a background in advising and presenting at art history forums based on photography, including lectures at the Tate Modern, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), DePaul Art Museum, King’s College London, California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), and The New School. Delgado is a recipient of a 2019 Knight Arts Challenge award, the 2018 School of Art Criticism Fellowship by SAPS - La Tallera, and a 2017 Research and Production of Critic Essay Fellowship by TEOR/éTica. Delgado conceptualized the world’s first-ever feminist photography collective conference, WOPHA Congress: Women, Photography, and Feminisms (November 17-20, 2021). She publishes and curates from feminist and decolonial perspectives on crucial topics of the history of photography and abstraction within Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx contexts.
Steven Baboun is a queer artist from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and based in New York City. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Film and Media Arts as well as a minor in Education Studies from American University and graduated from Parsons School of Design with a Master of Fine Arts in Photography. Baboun is a new media artist creating through photography, video, performance, installation, and design. Currently, Baboun is the founder and creative director of the creative house, Studio Baboun, based in Brooklyn, New York.
VENUE ACCESSIBILITY
Unfortunately, 1014 Fifth Avenue is in the process of being refurbished, and is not fully accessible in its current state. We apologize to our guests and kindly ask you to contact j.stubbs@1014.nyc if you need further information or assistance. We will do our best to enable everyone to join us.