Comparable Exhbitions

The last comparable exhibition is Simone Leigh’s 2016 exhibition at The New Museum in New York titled “The Waiting Room”. This exhibition focused on wellness and medicine and referenced various care environments and opportunities including herbalist apothecaries, meditation rooms, and movement studios. Leigh was very innovative in designing her exhibition as it included a range of public and private workshops and healing treatments. 

Additionally, a series of talks, performances, and events conceptualized as medicinal dialogues on aging, disobedience, abortion, healing, and toxicity were offered throughout the course of the exhibition. Leigh created “The Waiting Room” as a space for wellness that required both the making of a sanctuary and an act of disobedience against the systemic enactment and repudiation of black pain.

“The Rituals of Black Womanhood” extends upon Leigh’s work but deviates from “The Waiting Room” as “The Rituals of Black Womanhood” is an online exhibition. Also “The Waiting Room” allowed womxn to connect physically in a healing space while “The Rituals of Black Womanhood” aims to create a virtual community through the COVID-19 Pandemic. 

Both exhibitions center the wholeness and care of Black womxnhood and use community care as a form of resistance to institutional neglect/disregard for the wholeness of Black womxn. While Leigh’s work is in opposition to the medical neglect of Black Womxn, “The Rituals of Black Womanhood” is in opposition to the commodification of Black Womxn for labor or political action.