Sumell, an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and activist, will share her work on interrogating the abuses of the American criminal justice system. Sumell will talk about her ongoing public art project, Solitary Gardens, created to protest solitary confinement and consider alternative land use. Join us to imagine a landscape without prisons as we prepare to bring a Solitary Garden to Wheaton.
The world knows Stacey Abrams as a political leader, founder of the nonprofit Fair Fight Action, and New York Times bestselling author. Ms. Abrams’ tireless commitment to promote nonviolent change via the ballot box recently earned her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Lesser known is her creative work as an award-winning author (often using the name of her alter-ego, Selena Montgomery) of eight romantic suspense novels and several non-fiction works. Following the presentation of the Otis Social Justice Award, Abrams will join Artist-in-Residence Joe Wilson, Jr. to have a conversation about the powerful and transformative roles storytellers hold in our society, and how her work as activist and author strengthen each other.
Please note: we do expect significant interest in this event. If we reach capacity, you will be notified of your status by email. Please limit registration requests to one name per household or viewing screen.
Muhammad Muwakil and Lou Lyons front Freetown Collective, a band that defies genre, delivering eclectic music and drawing on Trinidadian tradition and life experience. They perform infectious, transformative music fused with poetry and politics, philosophical and spiritual inspiration; and social justice is central to their music and creative vision. Join us for a virtual concert followed by a Q&A with the artists.
California-based comic artist Yumi Sakugawa talks about her creative practice and leads a meditation workshop on making friends with creative failure and surrendering to imperfection. This event is part of Spring into Wellness week and is sponsored by the Master Class in the Visual Arts Fund, given by a Wheaton alumna within the Evelyn Danzig Haas ’39 Visiting Artists Program.
Contemporary artist Elliott Jerome Brown, Jr. discusses his photographic installations and architectural and sculptural pieces. Brown’s work consists of compositionally obscured faces that heighten the interior landscape of the individual and the domestic spaces they inhabit. He has been featured in New York Magazine, Vice, Teen Vogue, Dazed, and more.
Interdisciplinary, multihyphenate artist Nafis White, kicks off her virtual artist residency with a discussion of her work in performance, collaborative community-assisted interventions, as well as her sculptural works created from objects commonly found in Black beauty supply stores. White has recently activated the city of Providence through her mural work, uniting a printmaking collective to respond to police brutality, voter suppression, Covid-19 and other local and global crises. During her residency White will engage Wheaton students in timely conversation as well as the production of an artwork on campus.
Multimedia writer and performance artist James Scruggs engages in conversation with Playwright-in-Residence Charlotte Meehan about his critically acclaimed performance work, Disposable Men. He speaks from research, observation, and experience about the “weaponized Black male body” via current events and the long U.S. history of killing unarmed Black men. This event includes Scruggs sharing images of his performance, reading from his work, and a Q&A.
Join interdisciplinary visual artist April Bey as she shares how her practices and materials explore an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian culture, contemporary pop culture, feminism, generational theory, social media, AfroFuturism, AfroSurrealism, post-colonialism and constructs of race within white supremacist systems. A brief Q&A will follow Bey’s talk. Registration is required for this Zoom event.
Composer and pianist Courtney Bryan discusses her recent works, including “Yet Unheard,” a work for orchestra and chorus which commemorates Sandra Bland’s tragic death in police custody in 2013. Bryan, a New Orleans native, is Assistant Professor of Music at Tulane, and has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition. Registration is required for this Zoom event.
Ebony Williams ’08 believes the link, the thread, the piece of yarn, that connects her life work is her belief in process. While it’s common that human beings spend much of our time focused on the problem and the solution to obstacles that arise from living, the middle part, the journey we go through to reach our desired end point is where we learn the most. It is where we are presented with the most opportunities to grow and experience our humanity, but it is also where we spend the least amount of time reflecting. In this talk Williams’ discusses the focus of her work, creating opportunities for individuals to indulge in the luxury of their process in order to heal. Registration is required for this Zoom event.