Making Space: Art and Generative Communal Practices
Thursday, November 5, 12:00PM EST
This 3-part conversation series focuses on solidarity, social justice, and communal care in museums, independent art spaces, and artistic projects. Convened and moderated by Ilaria Conti, an independent curator, and POWarts Steering Committee member, Francesca Altamura, invited guests will discuss their work toward ethical community practices in the contemporary art field and beyond. For the second session, join Eva Mayhabal Davis, Founder, El Salón, and Alisha B. Wormsley, Founder, Sibyls Shrine, as they discuss their own independent projects.
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Ilaria Conti is an independent curator with a focus on research-based practices addressing social justice, decolonial processes, and the relationship between institutional infrastructures, communal care, and public engagement. Most recently, she served as Research Curator at the Centre Pompidou for Cosmopolis, a multiyear platform devoted to research-based art. Previously, she served as Exhibitions and Programs Director at CIMA New York, Assistant Curator of the 2016 Marrakech Biennale, and Samuel H. Kress Interpretive Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other positions. Curated projects include ALT(ering) + SHIFT(ing) + COMM(uning) (2020), Labor/Art/Auratic Conditions (2020), Prove di R(i)esistenza (2020), Cosmopolis #2: Rethinking the Human (2019), Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence (2018), Cosmopolis #1: Collective Intelligence, (2017); 6th Marrakech Biennale: Not New Now (2016).
Eva Mayhabal Davis (b. Toluca, Mexico) has curated exhibitions at Queens Museum, Smack Mellon, Photoville NY, BronxArtSpace,En Foco, Expressiones Cultural Center, MECA International Art Fair. She is a co-director at Transmitter, a collaborative curatorial initiative, and the Intake Associate at UnLocal, Inc, a non-profit organization that provides direct legal aid and community education to New York City’s undocumented immigrant communities. She is a cultural advocate, working directly with artists and creatives in the production of exhibitions, texts, and events. She is a founding member of El Salón, a meetup for cultural producers.
Alisha B. Wormsley (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Her work is about collective memory and the synchronicity of time, specifically through the stories of women of color, more specifically Black Women in America. Wormsley is an artist who has worked in communities around the world, helping to develop artistic ideas, celebrate identities, and organize public art initiatives for national and international audiences. Wormsley’s work has received a number of awards and grants to support programs namely the Children of NAN film series and archive, and There Are Black People In The Future. Her work has exhibited globally. Over the last few years, Wormsley has designed several public art initiatives including Streaming Space, a 24 foot pyramid with video and sound installed in Pittsburgh's downtown Market Square, and AWxAW, a multimedia interactive installation and film commission at the Andy Warhol Museum. Wormsley created a public program out of her work, "There Are Black People In the Future", which gives mini-grants to open up discourse around displacement and gentrification and was also awarded a fellowship with Monument Lab and the Goethe Institute. In 2020, Wormsley launched an art residency for Black creative mothers called Sibyls Shrine, which has received two years of support from the Heinz Endowments. Wormsley has an MFA in Film and Video from Bard College and currently is a Presidential Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University to research and create work around the resurgence of matriarchal energy (defined as witchcraft by white supremacy) in the African-American community.