Soon and Very Soon: Black Queer Liberatory Aesthetics + Curation

The Boston Ujima Project Inc. presents Soon and Very Soon: Radical Alternatives to the Given, to explore alternative visions of curation and institutional practice, hosted jointly by Ujima’s Arts & Cultural Organizing team and Wagner Foundation.

Across the globe, arts organizations, archivists, curators and collectors are re-imagining the art world from the outside in, exploring innovative alternatives within and beyond the institution. This three-part series contemplates and complicates the context and significance of creating alternative strategies and methods.

Doors open at 6PM for light reception!

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Conversation II: Black Queer Liberatory Aesthetics + Curation — April 3, 2025

• Moderator: , PhD, is an Associate Professor of Social Justice Education in the Student Development department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst–College of Education. He is the inaugural Director of Arts, Culture, and Political Engagement at the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research (CRJ). A William T. Grant Writing Fellow, Dr. Coles focuses on Blackness, Indigeneity, and racialization in research on inequality in young people’s lives. He serves on the International Editorial Board for Curriculum Inquiry and was recently appointed to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Research Foundation Board of Trustees. His work appears in numerous academic journals.
• bashezo boyd is an artist whose care conjuring practice is rooted in the poetics of Blackness and Black Queer Trans (BQT) aliveness. they create objects, spaces, installations, and performances that explore Blackness|BQTransness within ritualized care frameworks shaped by ancestral reverence, afro-diasporic spiritual traditions, black feminism, queer theory, and other healing technologies.their work embraces multimodal and supertemporal relationships among ancestral spirit wisdom, natural elements, experimentation, and liberatory practices to create worlds where Blackness and BQT folx can BE and thrive. projects build on one another, reusing materials and themes to create layered sensorial experiences.
• Mercedes Loving-Manley is a community curator, artist, and executive director and Founder of PrideXtended, Inc., a nonprofit organization which centers the wellbeing and security of Black LGBTQ+ people with heightened urgency on transgender populations.

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Safety Guidelines: To keep our community safe, we ask all attendees to take a COVID-19 test before the event and show a photo of their result at check-in. A limited number of rapid tests will be available. If you're feeling unwell, we kindly ask that you rest at home.

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Image: Joanne Petit-Frere, 2020 #BlackTrust Artist, weaving before a lecture. (February 13, 2020)

* Legacy Russell discussed the need for sustainable resourcing in Black Curation during the Radical Practice of Black Curation Symposium panel at Princeton University on April 11 in Wallace Theater, Lewis Arts Complex.

Host or Publisher Boston Ujima Project