Exploring Healing for Black Womxn - curated by C. Reeder

Phylicia Ghee
The Intrepid Trilogy
2018
Performance, Charcoal, Cotton
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INTREPID III is Ghee’s individual performance at Inkwell Beach, In Martha’s Vineyard in 2018. Ghee’s is an interdisciplinary artist whose work centers spirituality, healing, rituals, ancestry, wisdom, and art.

Ghee moves in a spiral motion while writing a series of healing affirmations in charcoal on a 9 by 9' sheet of paper. The spiral is significant as it is a family symbol for Ghee’s grandfather and also found in the double helix of DNA and in nature.

As she writes, the spiral motion of her body removes charcoal from the paper onto her skin, and in this way, Ghee becomes one with her affirmations.

(link to audio https://evyanwhitney.com/cheche-sexually-liberated-woman/)

Ev’Yan is an African American sex educator who helps women and femmes heal from their sexual trauma. Through Ev’Yan’s three-month sexual liberation + healing course, she coaches women and femmes through sexual healing and intimacy in their relationships.

Through these therapeutic sessions, Ev’Yan centers pleasure as she guides her clients into their own sexual awakenings and helps them recover their lost connection with their bodies, and desires.

In "I'm Not Broken, I'm Whole" Whitney has a conversation with her previous clients, Che Che, a queer woman of color who aimed to release her limiting beliefs in order to reach sexual liberation post-trauma.

Carla Jay Harris
The Reach, 2020
Archival inkjet print
40 × 60 in
101.6 × 152.4 cm

Carla Jay Harris is a multidisciplinary artist and curator whose work includes photography, installation, collage, and drawing. The Reach showcases themes of hope, and beauty and visually represents a Black woman’s connection to nature. In this piece, Harris explores the connection between the universe and the self within one’s identity.

In each of her projects, Harris builds upon aspects of her own personal experience and turns her discovery and ideas into artwork. As her ideas develop she evolves the work to become a lasting statement about human nature.

Curatorial/Narrative Statement

Surviving 2020 is an Olympic sport, and having the opportunity to use my academic time and space to explore healing for Black womxn has been a healing experience for me. I want to share and participate in the community of love, care, and intention that Black womxn create, and this online exhibition has fulfilled these goals. My exposure to Social Justice Curating in Seminar in Curatorial Practice has prepared me to merge activism with the intellectual to create art and connection. While previously I felt that my intellectual pursuits and creative expressions existed in separate spheres, throughout the semester, I have exercised the muscle that allows me to think creatively about activism and, inversely, weave activism in my creative expression. The ability to learn about Social Justice Curating while working under social justice curator Carmen Hermo at the Brooklyn Museum allowed me to continually engage in the technical applications to the imagining, theorizing, and positing that occurs in the Seminar course. I have increased my knowledge of art significantly and have practiced curating skills that I will use throughout my career. My gallery talk, various forms of research, and engaging conversations on objects, art, and ideas have prepared me to do such in a professional area.

My work ethic, outlook, and excitement stem from the incredibly interesting curating of Carmen Hermo at the Brooklyn Museum, Joanne Hyppolite at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Museum Futurist Kimberly Drew, and professor Nicole Fleetwood. These curators practice from a social justice lens and center community, accessibility, equality, and visibility in their work. Nicole Fleetwood's book "Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration," and Kimberly Drew's conversation with NPR on the accessibility of art reveals how curators use their positionality as a space for exploration and source of strength. Fleetwood, Drew, Hyppolite, and Hermo all embody my goal and aspirations to share insightful and intriguing stories in a multitude of manners in accessible spaces.

From curators to reading, to Dr. Webb-Binder's guided discussions, I have learned a litany of skills and increased my knowledge, exposure, and excitement for curating.