The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times led by Nikole Hannah-Jones, observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. Read interactive version online or you can download a pdf of the entire August 18 New York Times Magazine here: https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf
This book came out of conference in Florence, Italy that I was honored to be a part of. It is an incredible resource.
Introduction: Women and Migration[s] Deborah Willis, Ellyn Toscano and Kalia Brooks Nelson
Part One: Imagining Family and Migration 11
Between Self and Memory Ellyn Toscano
Fragments of Memory: Writing the Migrant’s Story Anna Arabindan-Kesson
A Congolese Woman’s Life in Europe: A Postcolonial Diptych of Migration Sandrine Colard
Migrations Kathy Engel
Part Two: Mobility and Migration
Carrying Memory Marianne Hirsch
Making Through Motion Wangechi Mutu
Strange Set of Circumstances: White Artistic Migration and Crazy Quilt Karen Finley
Nora Holt: New Negro Composer and Jazz Age Goddess Cheryl A. Wall
Part Three: Understanding Pathways
Silsila: Linking Bodies, Deserts, Water Sama Alshaibi
My Baby Saved My Life: Migration and Motherhood in an American High School Jessica Ingram
Visualizing Displacement Above The Fold Lorie Novak
Unveiling Violence: Gender and Migration in the Discourse of Right-Wing Populism Debora Spini
A Different Lens Maaza Mengiste
Reinventing the Spaces Within: The Early Images of Artist Lalla Essaydi Isolde Brielmaier
Swimming with E. C. Kellie Jones
Part Four: Reclaiming Our Time
Kinship, the Middle Passage, and the Origins of Racial Slavery Jennifer L. Morgan
Black Women’s Work: Resisting and Undoing Character Education and the ‘Good’ White Liberal Agenda Bettina L. Love
Filipina Stories: Gabriela NY and Justice for Mary Jane Veloso Editha Mesina
Women & Migrations: African Fashion’s Global Takeover Allana Finley
What Would It Mean to Sing A Black Girl’s Song?: A Brief Statement on the Reality of Anti-Black Girl Terror Treva B. Lindsey
Part Five: Situated at the Edge
Fredi’s Migration: Washington’s Forgotten War on Hollywood Pamela Newkirk
Julia de Burgos: Cultural Crossing and Iconicity Vanessa Pérez-Rosario
Sarah Parker Remond’s Black American Grand Tour Sirpa Salenius
Making Latinx Art: Juana Valdes at the Crossroads of Latinx and Latin American Art Arlene Dávila
Moving Mountains: Harriet Hosmer’s Nineteenth-Century Italian Migration to Become the First Professional Woman Sculptor Patricia Cronin
Part Six: Transit, Transiting, and Transition
Urban Candy: Screens, Selfies and Imaginings Roshini Kempadoo
Controlled Images and Cultural Reassembly: Material Black Girls Living in an Avatar World Joan Morgan
Supershero Amrita Simla, Partitioned Once, Migrated Twice Sarah K. Khan
Diaspora, Indigeneity, Queer Critique: Tracey Moffatt’s Aesthetics of Dwelling in Displacement Gayatri Gopinath
The Performance of Doubles: The Transposition of Gender and Race in Ming Wong’s Life of Imitation Kalia Brooks Nelson
Part Seven: The World is Ours, Too
The Roots of Black American Women’s Internationalism: Migrations of the Spirit and the Heart Francille Rusan Wilson
‘The World is Ours, Too’: Millennial Women and the New Black Travel Movement Tiffany M. Gill
Performing a Life: Mattie Allen McAdoo’s Odyssey from Ohio to South Africa, Australia and Beyond, 1890–1900 Paulette Young
‘I Don’t Pay Those Borders No Mind At All’: Audley E. Moore (‘Queen Mother’ Moore) – Grassroots Global Traveler and Activist Sharon Harley
Löis Mailou Jones in the World Cheryl Finley
Part Eight: Emotional Cartography: Tracing the Personal
The Ones Who Leave… the Ones Who Are Left: Guyanese Migration Story Grace Aneiza Ali
The Acton Photograph Archive: Between Representation and Re-Interpretation Alessandra Capodacqua
Reconciliations at Sea: Reclaiming the Lusophone Archipelago in Mónica de Miranda’s Video Works M. Neelika Jayawardane
Transnational Minor Literature: Cristina Ali Farah’s Somali Italian Stories Alessandra Di Maio
Seizing Control of the Narrative Misan Sagay
Migration as a Woman’s Right: Stories from Comparative and Transnational Slavery Histories in the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds Gunja SenGupta
The Sacred Migration of Sister Gertrude Morgan Imani Uzuri
Now that you have seen the table of contents, you will really want the free download
Too often as we put our blogs together we think about what we like personally but don’t really give a lot of thought to how others may view the same pages. In the end, the goal is to have others to be able to read our blogs and enjoy them, but are we making small mistakes that could be making it difficult for others to enjoy our blogs? Here are a few thoughts from some of our bloggers on things that often make it difficult for them to access blogs and websites.
“The act of sewing together each piece of cloth in an act of reparation, of knitting our own peace and is especially important at this time of uncertainty,” -Doris Salcedo
Participants in an artistic intervention by Doris Salcedo at the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, Colombia, Oct 11, 2016 Photo: Leonardo Muñoz/EPA
In an act of protest against a civil conflict that has raged for more than 50 years, the plaza was covered in a massive white shroud bearing the names of the war’s many victims.
The public statement of mourning by artist Doris Salcedo was temporarily installed as the country grapples with the rejection of a peace deal with leftist Farc rebels that would have ended the war. [read more]
More on the intervention in an article on Hyperallergic
We live in an era of increasing automation. But as machines make more decisions for us, it is increasingly important to understand the algorithms that produce their judgments.
Living in the age of algorithms and how they affect our lives.
“Casualties of recent fighting in the Gaza Strip may well find themselves undergoing surgery atop an operating table that is also an artwork. In what the three-man Danish collective Superflex calls a “readymade upside-down,” the artists organized for a museum exhibition of top-of-the-line medical equipment which then went to a setting defined less by well-heeled visitors than by life-threatening injuries.
As a result, Al-Shifa Hospital is the beneficiary of some $90,000 worth of goods,..” read more
Faith Ringgold, The American People Series #20: Die, 1967.
Ringgold’s original plan had been to study art. But when she showed up at City College’s School of Liberal Arts, she was informed that it did not admit women. “They’re sitting there trying to make me understand that I cannot get a liberal arts degree there,” she said, “and I am refusing to understand. And out of it, one woman says”—Ringgold dropped her voice to a whisper—“ ‘She can do it. Let me tell you how. She can [enroll in the School of Education] and major in art.’ ”
By asking people to lie down in Bed Down Location, I want them to enter an empathetic space and imagine drone warfare—not simply to understand it from news articles but to ponder the sky and imagine that there is a machine flying above you that could end your life at any moment. What does that feel like? Many people in the world are living under skies where that is a reality. [read article]
Images from Laura Poitras’s “Anarchist” series, which are drawn from documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden.
[The title, Astro Noise, refers to the faint background disturbance of thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang and is the name Edward Snowden gave to an encrypted file containing evidence of mass surveillance by the National Security Agency that he shared with Poitras in 2013. ]
W.A.G.E. (WORKING ARTISTS AND THE GREATER ECONOMY) WORKS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES THAT EXIST IN THE ARTS, AND TO RESOLVE THEM.
W.A.G.E. HAS BEEN FORMED BECAUSE WE, AS VISUAL + PERFORMANCE ARTISTS AND INDEPENDENT CURATORS, PROVIDE A WORK FORCE.
W.A.G.E. RECOGNIZES THE ORGANIZED IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE ART MARKET AND ITS SUPPORTING INSTITUTIONS, AND DEMANDS AN END OF THE REFUSAL TO PAY FEES FOR THE WORK WE’RE ASKED TO PROVIDE: PREPARATION, INSTALLATION, PRESENTATION, CONSULTATION, EXHIBITION AND REPRODUCTION.
W.A.G.E. REFUTES THE POSITIONING OF THE ARTIST AS A SPECULATOR AND CALLS FOR THE REMUNERATION OF CULTURAL VALUE IN CAPITAL VALUE.
W.A.G.E. BELIEVES THAT THE PROMISE OF EXPOSURE IS A LIABILITY IN A SYSTEM THAT DENIES THE VALUE OF OUR LABOR.
AS AN UNPAID LABOR FORCE WITHIN A ROBUST ART MARKET FROM WHICH OTHERS PROFIT GREATLY, W.A.G.E. RECOGNIZES AN INHERENT EXPLOITATION AND DEMANDS COMPENSATION.
W.A.G.E. CALLS FOR AN ADDRESS OF THE ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES THAT ARE PREVALENT, AND PROACTIVELY PREVENTING THE ART WORKER’S ABILITY TO SURVIVE WITHIN THE GREATER ECONOMY.
W.A.G.E. ADVOCATES FOR DEVELOPING AN ENVIRONMENT OF MUTUAL RESPECT BETWEEN ARTIST AND INSTITUTION.
W.A.G.E. DEMANDS PAYMENT FOR MAKING THE WORLD MORE INTERESTING.
Founded in 2008, Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is a New York-based activist organization focused on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions and establishing a sustainable labor relation between artists and the institutions that contract their labor.