Date/Time
Thursday, October 7, 2021
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Categories
Lyman Allyn Art Museum presented in partnership with PARJE (Public Art for Racial Justice Education)
Register for this virtual lecture on Zoom.
Brianna Harlan discusses Black Love Blooms, a performance set on loving Black people as they are, where they are. This breaks down racial stereotypes and how they affect the daily lives of Black people and the communities that hold them through gentle and soft offerings. In Black Love Blooms local businesses and grass-roots organizations donate flowers and love notes for Black community members to gift to Black people in public. Audiences are brought to awareness of their own role in the systemic negative impact of stereotypes and what it is like to reverse them with acts of love.
Artist Bio Brianna Harlan is a multiform artist and organizer. She works in community intervention and re-contextualized objects to innovate on how sociopolitical identity affects health, selfhood, and community. She has been published in several forms as a voice in cultural activism nationally and internationally. Her equity in arts initiative was featured in ARTnews. In 2020, she collaborated with 4th Wall to create an AR Monument for Breonna Taylor and had a New York solo exhibition: Black Love Blooms: New York Nook to interrupt harmful narratives around Black public image and connection. She has been the artist in residence or fellowship at Oxbow, Materia Abierta, and the DreamYard Project.
Brianna also works as a creative, community organizer and strategist for several community initiatives around the country including City University of New York’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Incubator. She has been a speaker at events, conferences, and the Kentucky ACLU. She just completed her MFA in Art and Social Action at Queens College.
This lecture is part of a series “Arts & Advocacy: Methods to Spark Positive Change Through Art” with PARJE (Public Art for Racial Justice Education) and made possible by the State of Connecticut and the National Endowment for the Humanities, both of which provide significant support to Connecticut Humanities.
