Join us for the opening event to launch our digital exhibition, On Protest and Mourning—a gathering of photographers and filmmakers whose work reveal how as a community, a nation, and a diaspora we grapple with anger, loss, and grief in response to the ongoing state violence and police brutality perpetrated against Black bodies. Their poignant and timely work helps us to navigate the questions: While we engage in protest and uprising, how can we also mark the lives that have been irreparably damaged or lost? How do we create rituals and make spaces for mourning?
Jon Henry will speak about his series Stranger Fruit, an ongoing body of work centering Black mothers in classical pietà poses with their sons. Henry began the series in 2014—the year we lost Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice at the hands of police. “I set out to photograph mothers with their sons in their environment, reenacting what it must feel like to endure this pain,” says Henry. “The mothers in the photographs have not lost their sons, but understand the reality that this could happen to their family.” Through the portraits of women in intimate gestures of cradling, holding, and embracing their sons, Henry aims to capture the visceral fear and vulnerable emotional landscape of Black mothers. Henry will be joined in conversation with photography-focused interdisciplinary artist and writer Qiana Mestrich who recently wrote about Stranger Fruit for Photograph Magazine. Special guest Monifa Bandele, who has worked with MomsRising to advocate for economic security and justice for mothers, women, and families, will offer remarks. The conversation will be hosted by Grace Aneiza Ali, curator of On Protest and Mourning.
Jon Henry
Jon Henry, originally from Flushing, Queens, is a Brooklyn-based visual artist working with photography and text. His work reflects on family, socio political issues, grief, trauma, and healing within the African-American community. His work has been published nationally and internationally and exhibited at the Aperture Foundation, Smack Mellon and BRIC, among others. Henry’s awards include the Arnold Newman Grant for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture, En Foco Fellow 2020, LensCulture's Emerging Artists 2019, the Film Photo Prize for Continuing Film Project sponsored by Kodak.
Qiana Mestrich
Qiana Mestrich is a photography-focused interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. Her critical writing has been published in photo journals such as En Foco’s Nueva Luz, Light Work’s Contact Sheet and SPE’s exposure. Mestrich is the founder of Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History (est. 2007), an arts initiative that aims to decolonize the medium by advocating for Black, Indigenous and other photographers of color. Dodge & Burn began as a blog and also functions as a monthly critique group online. A graduate of the ICP-Bard College MFA in Advanced Photographic Practice, Mestrich is adjunct faculty in photography and social media at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY).
Monifa Bandele
Monifa Bandele is the Chief Operating Officer at TIME’S UP where she leads the organization to deliver on its global strategic goal to ensure safe, fair, and dignified workplaces for women. In addition, she sits on the policy table leadership team for the Movement for Black Lives and the steering committee for Communities United for Police Reform. Bandele has more than two decades of advocacy and policy experience, such as launching two historic and successful legal cases against police misconduct in New York City (Floyd v NYC and Daniels v NYC) and working to pass five landmark pieces of police reform legislation in New York. Prior to TIME’S UP, Monifa served as senior vice president and chief equity and partnerships officer at MomsRising, co-leading a national on-the-ground and online grassroots organization of more than a million people working to achieve economic security and justice for moms, women, and families. She also worked at the Brennan Center for Justice as national field director for the Right to Vote Campaign, leading a successful coalition that restored the right to vote to more than 250,000 formerly incarcerated people in five states.
Grace Anezia Ali
Guyanese-American Grace Aneiza Ali serves as Curator-at-Large for the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in New York. She is an Assistant Professor and Provost Fellow in the Department of Art & Public Policy at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Ali’s curatorial research and teaching practice centers on curatorial activism, socially engaged art practices, global contemporary art, and art of the Caribbean Diaspora with a focus on her homeland Guyana. Ali is the editor of the recent publication, Liminal Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora (Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK).