Sites of Resistance from Soft Space on Vimeo.
Sites of Resistance
Sunday, February 26 6-9PM
Inspired by the writings of Bell Hooks, Sites of Resistance explores the ways black women reconstruct narratives surrounding race and identity. The show aims to create a space where artistic inquiry interrogates flattened notions of blackness and what it means to be a person of color. This is a one-night screening of video works by Melanie Stevens and Vanessa Barros Andrade.
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Melanie Stevens is an artist, illustrator and writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree for Political Science from Yale University in 2001 and is the creator of the graphic novel, ‘Black Picket Fences’. She is the co-founder and editor of Miss Anthology, an organization that supports and publishes racially and economically diverse young comic artists of the female diaspora, as well as the co-creator of Nat Turner Project, a mobile gallery space that allows artists of color the freedom to create or express their own language within and without the parameters of racial commodification or designation. She is currently pursuing a Master’s of Fine Arts degree for Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.
For the month of February of 2016, I sat at a table, alone, in the atrium of Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon every Wednesday afternoon, under a sign which read, simply, “Black”, and allowed people to write about and discuss race in America, via a series of carefully designed questions. They could write their answers anonymously and drop them into a black box, or they could ponder them and discuss with me or each other. In many cases, it was both. I then posted those answers on a Tumblr website so that everyone could read all of the answers and turned some of those questions and answers into an animation.
Vanessa Barros Andrade is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist and DJ based out of Orlando, Florida. Andrade is one of the co-founders and curators at the 501c3 organization, Time Waste Management. TWM is currently functioning as a communal studio space for several local artists and curators. She’s is also a featured writer for the Orlando arts publication, Artborne Magazine. A lot of her studio practice includes reading, writing, watching animes/cartoons, creating conceptual musical playlists and playing with children’s toys. She’s currently focused on creating video and sound works reflecting these practices. Andrade’s last performance was a DJ set/installation called Kiss Emoji?. The show consisted of 5 musical artists who performed their sets on a mattress/installation in front of a live audience.