Building Worlds with The Free Black Women’s Library

As part of their Session project, The Meeting Place, artist Helina Metaferia has invited OlaRonke Akinmowo of The Free Black Women’s Library to facilitate this free writing workshop that interrogates the possibility of how Afro-Futurism, daydreaming, and worldbuilding offer portals towards safety, community, and liberation.

Participants of this workshop will read and discuss the implications of Octavia Butler's first published short story, (1983), set in a post-pandemic Los Angeles dystopia. Picking up where Octavia left off, we will write and share our own stories, reading the story before the workshop is highly encouraged but not required. This workshop is for Black and POC women, femmes, and GNC folks no writing experience necessary.

is required.

Access Note:

This workshop is only open to those who identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and women (cis and trans), and gender non-conforming folks. Light refreshments will be served. All participants have the option to be photographed for Helina Metaferia’s collages at the conclusion of the workshop.

Part of Interdisciplinary artist Helina Metaferia’s The Meeting Place— a site for transformative gatherings by and for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) women (cis and transgender), who wish to engage in embodied and somatic practices as a way of activating epigenetics in order to release lived or inherited trauma of systemic oppression stored in the body. The project is designed to provide a supportive structure to an open-ended question: what does rest, love, care, and liberation look like for BIPOC women in the 21st century? The Meeting Place takes as inspiration the many meetings that women have historically organized throughout the global diaspora to strengthen each other in community, including the rituals of celebration, family gatherings, places of worship, protest, political organizing, and care work.

This event is in conjunction with Recess’s program, Session, which invites artists to use Recess’s public platform to combine productive studio space with dynamic exhibition opportunities. Sessions remain open to the public from the first day of the artist's project through the last, encouraging sustained dialogue between artists and audiences. Due to the process-based nature of Session, projects undergo constant revision and the above proposal is subject to change.

OlaRonke Akinmowo is a multidisciplinary artist who works in the world of collage, printmaking, papermaking, stop-motion animation, and interactive installation. Her art praxis involves illustrating and exploring the constructs of beauty, safety, and sanity. Through her creative practice and library work she shapes space, builds worlds, and conjures moments that center the pleasure, liberation, and humanity of Black women and Black queer folks. In 2015 she created The Free Black Women’s Library, a Brooklyn-based social art project that features a collection of over 5000 books by Black women and Black non-binary folks, a wide array of free public programs, a free store, a period pantry, a backyard garden, a virtual Reading Club, and a weekly book swap. Follow them at @thefreeblackwomenslibrary to stay connected.

Host or Publisher Recess