OPENING WEEKEND: SalonTalk with Anastacia Renée and Christa Bell

Join Anastacia Renée and Christa Bell for a morning of collective dialogue inspired by the exhibition, MUSE: Mickalene Thomas Photographs and tête-à-tête. Designed to be a safe space for an intracommunity conversation among Black women and Black gender non-conforming folks, this will be an outdoor, salon-style gathering. Facilitators will present a family reunion-inspired approach to generate a warm and creatively conducive environment for discussing core themes that emerge in the artwork of Thomas and the tête-à-tête artists, particularly as it relates to the lives of Black women.

Anastacia-Renée is Civic Poet of Seattle and former 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House. She is the author of four books: Forget It (Black Radish Books), (v.), (Gramma Press), Answer(Me) (Argus Press), and 26 (Dancing Girl Press), and her poetry, prose and fiction have been published widely.

Christa Bell is a multidisciplinary performance and conceptual artist, curator and writer from Seattle, Washington whose oeuvre addresses the spiritual and psychic recovery of Black and female bodied people in the West. She is a founding member of the arts collective HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN? and her (intra-collective) conceptual and curatorial project, thewayblackmachine, a digital archive documenting state violence committed against Black bodies is currently touring with the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston’s 2018 exhibition, Art In The Age Of The Internet. Christa holds a BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Washington Bothell.

This event was co-organized with Dr. Bettina Judd. She is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focuses on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.