Black Girls, Black Voices, Black History

REGISTER FOR THIS WEBINAR AT: https://berkeley.zoom.us/.../WN_jSC50uV6RVGfFg8Ix3VwGA.

Presented by UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, the Arcus Endowment Diversity Platform Committee and the Arcus Chair in Gender, Sexuality, and the Built Environment.

Enjoy a special showcase of three ongoing projects at the local and national levels around the theme of Black girls, Black voices, and Black history. Graduate students from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design (CED) reelaviolette botts-ward, Zachary McRae, and Rasheed Shabazz will share their projects, then host a discussion and Q&A.

reelaviolette botts-ward will discuss "Blackgirl Quarantine: An Exhibition of #BlackWomxnHealing" in the Wake of 2020, an exhibition organized and curated by Botts and Leticia Carpenter.

Blackgirl Quarantine invites Black womxn into collective mourning, grief work, and healing in the wake of 2020. Breonna Taylor, Oluwatoyin Salau, Dominique Fells, and countless Black womxn mourned through #SayHerName2020, compounded by the loss of beloved artists like Brax and Chynna Rogers, only exacerbate Black womxn’s intimacy with mortality in this season. As we reflect on our gendered, racialized, embodied and ancestral experiences in the midst of global catastrophe, we center our right to be well. To name harm. To mend wounds. To be unapologetic in our rage. To reflect each other’s suffering. To be held close, and to find restoration in the safety of sacred sisterhood.

McRae will discuss "Community Visions: Reimagining Planning through the Liberation of Black Communities," a monthly podcast featuring CED’s Black alumni, faculty, graduate students and community leaders to discuss politically-pointed issues, such as race and class struggles within the planning and built environment.

Shabazz will discuss his ongoing project Negro Piedmont: Race, Redlining, and Black History in Berkeley, a digital history website exploring the impacts of systemic racism and the historical development of unequal geographies in Berkeley.

Arts + Design Mondays is organized and sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Initiative. The series is co-curated by the African American Student Development Office; Berkeley Art Museum + Pacific Film Archive; Berkeley Center for New Media and the History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series; College of Environmental Design, the Arcus Endowment Diversity Platform Committee and the Arcus Chair in Gender, Sexuality, and the Built Environment; Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Future Histories Lab, a project of UC Berkeley Global Urban Humanities Initiative; Graduate School of Journalism; California Humanities and Villa San Francisco. Technical support and presentation offered by UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science, Division of Arts & Humanities.

The 2021 series of Arts + Design Mondays is made possible thanks to the generous financial support of Nancy Olson and Buzz Wiesenfeld. In-kind support provided by BAMPFA.

For more information, visit artsdesign.berkeley.edu/mondays.