cbvc

Rest is Power Exhibit Opening
2023-09-07 17:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Rest is Power is an exhibition that amplifies visual narratives of rest for global Black people. In a selection of artworks that span photography, painting and new media, the curators underscore Black rest as a radical act of resistance. In this exhibition, Dr. Joan Morgan, Kira Joy Williams and Dr. Deborah Willis explore rest as a healing modality for Black people.

Rest is Power provides an experience of liberation through visual repair. Depicted here is a small sample of the myriad ways Black people find rest while enduring the daily, multifaceted aggressions visited upon Black bodies. The exhibition is an invitation to disrupt toxic, lingering paradigms of work equaling worth, reminding us that the Black body’s value in the “new” world was originally assigned, not through the lens of mutual humanity, but solely by its capacity for physical, emotional and sexual labor. In these pieces, Black Rest resists, revives and replenishes. The artists in this exhibition create from a spring of inspiration that is deeply rooted in their own personal and artistic practices. Through various scenes––from domestic settings to landscapes––the more than twenty artists in Rest is Power both image and imagine Black Rest, engaging this construct uniquely through material culture, spiritual encounters, familial memory and nature.

The artists making connection to rest are: Kalila Ain, Zalika Azim, Daveed Baptiste, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Kennedi Carter, Renee Cox, Steven M. Cummings, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Lola Flash, Chris Friday, Cyd Fulton, Jamaica Gilmer, Allison Janae Hamilton, Chester Higgins, Deborah Jack, Savannah Faith Jackson, Lisa Leone, Tyler Mitchell, Stevia Ndoe, Gordon Parks, John Pinderhughes, Jeffrey Henson Scales, Jamel Shabazz, Cornelius Tulloch, Dae Tyas, Colette Veasey-Cullors, Adreinne Waheed, Carrie Mae Weems, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Kira Joy Williams, and Dr. Deborah Willis.

This exhibition is an initiative of the Black Rest Project (BRP) at the Center for Black Visual Culture at NYU. The Black Rest Project was inspired by artist, theologist and activist Tricia Hersey, who created the liberating framework of Rest is Resistance.

For more information about the Black Rest Project and the Center for Black Visual Culture, please visit cbvc.nyu.edu.
Date: Thursday, Sep 7, 2023
Time: 5 – 7:30pm EDT
Location: The Center for Black Visual Culture at NYU
20 Cooper Square New York, NY 10003

Rest is Power Artist Roundtable
2023-09-12 17:30 - 20:00
Center for Black Visual Culture
Join artists featured in the Rest is Power exhibition for a conversation about their practices of art and rest. This roundtable is co-moderated by CBVC Scholar-in-Residence Tricia Hersey (@thenapministry ) and CBVC Director, Dr. Deborah Willis.
The in-person reception will begin at 5:30 PM and the livestream and panel discussion will begin at 6 PM.
Tickets for the livestream event are available in our bio. While in-person tickets are sold out, you can register to join the waitlist in our bio.
Moderated by” Tricia Hersey & Dr. Deborah Willis
Featured Artists: Dated Baptiste, Colette Veasey-Cullors, Adam Delphine Fawundu, Chester Higgins, Deborah Jack
Date: September 12, 2023
Time: 5:30PM – 8:00PM EST
Location: 20 Cooper Square, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10003

Tricia Hersey Artists Scholar in Residence Welcome Reception
2023-09-25 18:30 - 20:00
Center for Black Visual Culture
Join us this Monday, September 25th to welcome Tricia Hersey (@thenapministry ), the Fall 2023 Artist-Scholar in Residence at the Center for Black Visual Culture! The evening will feature readings and remarks from the CBVC team, CBVC partners, and Tricia Hersey.
Tricia Hersey has over 20 years of experience as a multidisciplinary artist, writer, theologian and community organizer. She is a Chicago native who has called Atlanta home for 12 years. Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry, the originator of the “rest as resistance” and “rest as reparations” frameworks, and creates sacred spaces where the liberatory, restorative, and disruptive power of rest can take hold. Her work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, Afrofuturism, womanism, and Black liberation theology, and is a guide for how to collectively deprogram, decolonize, and unravel ourselves from the wreckage of capitalism and white supremacy.
Hersey holds a Bachelor of Science in public health from Eastern Illinois University and is an alumna of Candler School of Theology. She served as the 2023 Artist-Scholar in Residence at the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. Hersey is the author of the New York Times-bestselling book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto (Little, Brown Spark, 2022) and The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture (Chronicle, 2023). Learn more about her work at thenapministry.com.
Date: September 25, 2023
Time: 6:30PM – 8:00PM EST
Location: 20 Cooper Square 3rd Floor New York, NY 10003
