With Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham
In conversation with Raquel Willis and Naima Green
Showcasing the work of Naima Green
Co-presented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore

What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? To celebrate the launch of their new book collaboration, writer, curator, and activist Kimberly Drew and New York Times Magazine culture writer Jenna Wortham are joined by activist Raquel Willis to dissect this very question. Black Futures is a collection of work—featuring images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—that tells the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. This evening also features artist Naima Green, who will share some of her visual work, and join the discussion about this exciting new archive of collective memory and exuberant testimony, a luminous map to navigate an opaque and disorienting present, and an infinite geography of possible futures.

This event will include ASL interpretation and Closed Captioning.

Twenty Summers is thrilled to welcome author & journalist Jenna Wortham in residence at the Hawthorne Barn this Fall, and to host a virtual conversation with photographer Naima Green.

Naima Green’s exhibit Brief & Drenching is on view at Fotografiksa until February 2021, and Jenna Wortham’s Black Futures, co-edited by Kimberly Drew, will be published by Penguin Random House in December 2020.

During the COVID-19 crisis, many artists and creators are left wondering what their role is or how they can drive impact through their work. How are artists making space to create during times like this, and how can art become an opportunity to organize? Come and hear from artists Jordan Casteel, Naima Green, and Art Director, Cynthia Cervantes-Gumbs about their own processes, upcoming projects, and how they're maintaining a creative practice during times of political, economic, and social upheaval.

Thursday, April 30th at 12 pm EST, Session artist Naima Green (Pur·suit) and Britni Lonesome lead a game of spades.

Come to learn, come to play, and come to talk about what it means to play.

A conversation with Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Naima Green, and Ian Lewandowski on various modes of documenting queer communities moderated by Ariel Goldberg.

Variously Documenting: Methods of Portraiture (vimeo).

Geographies of Gender

Panel with Sable Elyse Smith, Rin Kim Ni, and Naima Green. Moderated by Caroline Washington.

Supplement Projects + ARTS.BLACK present

2 & a possible

The table is a microcosm of infrastructure. A long table implies hierarchy. There’s a head of the table, an illustration of patriarchy.  Service starts and ends at a place. For artists, GeoVanna Gonzalez and Najja Moon, designing a group of objects that reject this place setting means every decision is imagined as an equal opportunity access point. Motivated by Naima Green’s Pursuit deck which features photographs of queer womxn, trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people, Gonzalez and Moon approach this project considering the complexity of function as they challenge how an object can be absolved of expectations attached to gender. During Miami Art Week, Supplement Projects will host a spades tournament where Green’s Cards will be accompanied with excessive amounts of shit talking at a table designed by Gonzalez and Moon. In the spirit of all the great, queer, magical, blackness that is this place setting, the art journal ARTS.BLACK is supporting this project as a collaborator, and celebrating their 5 year anniversary.

An intimate gallery conversation with Down Time exhibiting artists Naima Green and Derrick Woods-Morrow.

Brooklyn-based artist and educator Naima Green leads an interactive Storytelling Saturday session inspired by Pur·suit (2019), a deck of 54 playing cards, and forthcoming digital archive, featuring photographs of queer womxn, trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people. The afternoon will begin with an open mic of radical queer texts followed by a demonstration on the basics of spades. Participants are encouraged to bring their favorite games and best spades partner!

NYPL Library After Hours Pride edition will include:

• Explore the history of LGBTQ civil rights following the 1969 Stonewall Riots through the Library’s exhibition Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 featuring photographs, documents, ephemera, and more that illustrate the themes of nightlife, love, activism, and the queer press.

• Curator talk with Jason Baumann, the Library’s assistant director of Collection Development and curator of Love & Resistance

• Artist talk with photographer Naima Green, creator of the project “Pur·suit”, a deck of playing cards featuring queer womxn, trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people

• A literary drag show with Drag Queen Story Hour and special guests

• Morgan Bassichis, Vichet Chum, Dillon Heape, Donja R. Love and others read aloud from the Library’s vast LGBTQ archives, sharing love letters and unpublished materials by Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Truman Capote and more!

• Crafts and coloring inspired by NYPL collections 

• Music by DJ Robi D Light

• Walt Whitman: America's Poet exhibition

With increasing visibility for queer folks and queer stories in popular culture (see: the Netflix reboot of Queer Eye, FX’s Pose, and RuPaul’s Drag Race—now in its eleventh season), it’s important to take a look at how we got here. This session of Optics commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Riots, and examines how Stonewall’s legacy has contributed to a visual language of queer resistance over the last 50 years. How have images of queerness—and those made from a queer lens—troubled and expanded (inter)national understandings of human rights, community, anger, and celebration?

Join journalist and curator Sarah Burke, photographer Naima Green, performance and queer studies scholar Kareem Khubchandani, and series host Reya Sehgal for this meditation on what the queer eye can see, featuring a special performance by Untitled Queen.

Join national and local artists, curators and activists for a one-day symposium at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale on issues in the LGBTQ+ art community.