Book Launch: “Black Women as/and the Living Archive”

Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) is thrilled to announce the publication of “Black Women as/and the Living Archive,” edited by DC-based artist Tsedaye Makonnen and WPA’s Jordan Martin. To celebrate, please join us for an intimate conversation between Makonnen and ICA London Curator of Learning Nydia A. Swaby to discuss how this project archives the ways in which Black women encode, preserve, and share memory through community.

The book is a part of a larger project of the same name that Makonnen organized in the spring and summer of 2020 with WPA. Central to Makonnen’s inquiry is Alisha B. Wormsley’s Children of NAN: Mothership, a film that functions as a metaphor for the survival and power of Black women in a dystopic future. The cast and collaborators of the film all participated in the multi-event project including Lisa E. Harris, Jasmine Hearn, Autumn Knight, Ingrid LaFleur, and Jamila Raegan. The publication archive’s of the project’s development and realization during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and throughout the Black Lives Matter uprisings. It captures the relationships and interactions between participants and the audience, and documents the participating artists’ visionary contributions, which included new performances. Additionally, it includes newly commissioned writing by Jessica Lanay, Jo Stewart, Ladi’Sasha Jones, and Yona Harvey, and an annotated bibliography by Ola Ronke, creator of The Free Black Women’s Library. The publication has been beautifully designed by Rheagen King.

Makonnen and Swaby’s conversation will serve as an extension of this living archive. They will discuss how Black women use the practice of archiving and relationship-building for their survival and joy, and how this project is very much alive and in continuum due to the ongoing nature of its relationships.