 Good evening and thank you for joining us for our celebration of Nona Faustine's monographic book, White Shoes. My name is Eugenie Tsai. I'm the John and Barbara Volkestein Senior Curator of Contemporary Art here at the Brooklyn Museum. Before we delve into tonight's program, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge that we are currently located on land as part of the unceded ancestral homeland of the Lenape Delaware Nations. We recognize and honor the Lenape Delaware Nations, their elders, and all future generations. I would also like to pay tribute to the enslaved people who built the foundation of our country. At the museum, we are committed to addressing systemic racism and the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism in our collective work. I'll be joined on stage by American Sign Language interpreters Kyle Nye and Gloria Vargas, their seats reserved in the front rows for anyone who would like a direct view of the ASL interpreters, and those are marked with a white sheet of paper. Tonight's program will open with a poem by Pamela Snead. Then Nona Faustine will present an overview of her new book, White Shoes, which was published in December by Mack, who have been integral collaborators on this evening's programming. White Shoes is a collection of self-portraits taken in locations around New York that were sites of slave auctions, burial grounds, slave-owning farms, and the coastal locations where slave ships docked. Very much, sounding like the financial district in lower Manhattan where I live. Through her photograph, Faustine confronts the city's one significant and now largely obscured and unacknowledged involvement in the slave trade and expresses solidarity with the people whose names and memories have been lost but are embedded in the land. Afterward, Faustine will be joined on stage by the book contributors Pamela Snead, Jessica Laney, and Zef Rodney for a discussion of the book and its making. Let me take a moment right now to introduce you to them. Nona Faustine is a native New Yorker and award-winning photographer. Her work focuses on history identity representation and proposes a deeper examination of contemporary racial and gender stereotypes. Her work is in the collection of the David C. Driscoll Center at the Maryland State University, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Carnegie Museum, and of course the Brooklyn Museum. In 2017, Nona gave a walkthrough of ruins and rituals, a groundbreaking exhibition of Beverly Buchanan sculptures that was here on view at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Her observations about the monuments made a huge impression on me. We later acquired three of Nona's photographs from the White Shoes series that were shot at the nearby Lefferts House. Some of you may have seen them in the exhibition, the slipstream, reflection, resilience, and resistance in the art of our time, where they were on view for six months. But if you missed them, this is all the more reason to purchase the book White Shoes because they are reproduced in that volume. Jessica Lanay is an interdisciplinary writer, poet, and art journalist raised in Key West, Florida. Her debut hybrid collection, Antibian, won the 2020 Naomi Long Magic Poetry Prize judged by Tua Derekot from Broadside Lotus Press. She has performed her poetry at the Brooklyn Museum, the K. Pannam and Bowie Presents first book series, and with Brooklyn Poets. Seth Rodney, Ph.D., was born in Jamaica and came of age in the Bronx, New York. He's a senior critic and the opinions editor for Hyper Allergic. He can be heard weekly on the podcast The American Age. His book, The Personalization of Museum Visit, was published by Rutledge in May of 2019. In 2020, he won the Labkin Arts Journalism Prize. Pamela Sneed is a New York-based poet, performer, and visual artist. She's the author of Funeral Diva, published by City Lights in October 2020, featured in the New York Times and the Publishers Weekly. Funeral Diva won the 2021 Lambda Lesbian Poetry Award. She currently has work on view at the Leslie Lohman Museum and has won the 2021 Black Queer Art Mentorship Award for her leadership and literary talent. Now, please join me in welcoming to the stage Pamela Sneed, who will kick off our evening. Thank you. All right. Good evening. Parents of the people, all the people all the time. All right. So I want to start off and I want to say, one, just to mention, you know, a big loss that we've had recently, and that's Bell Hooks. And I want to mention Greg Tate and Andre Leontali. So I just speak their name tonight. And I want to say I'm so proud of Nona Fostin as a friend and as an artist. Her work is so important and I'm reading a new poem. Sometimes I contemplate that the irony of that much of South Africa's economy now is built on a man, person, movement, human beings that the government and police once tried to kill. That hundreds of thousands of people of every color prior to COVID for years flock to Robin Island in South Africa to tour Mandela's former self. There's still a blanket and a basin with barely room to breathe. Others too were held on Robin Island, anti-apartheid leaders who were broken and went mad there. It's remarkable amidst these circumstances, Mandela's spirit still rose. Anyone who listens, I'll tell in his own words that what sustained him through 27 years of imprisonment was a poem. It's interesting now, part of the country's economy relies on him. I read on the internet that his net worth when he died was only about 3 million. Touring, I also visited a small house in Cape Town where he lived with Winnie and the girls. Their kitchen had a bulletproof wall. I can't imagine what it was like to live like that. The fear that you or your children might be killed at any moment. Can't tell you how meaningful it is to also visit the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, where some of the actual artillery used in fighting apartheid is displayed. You understand that the war for freedom was long and bloody. The last room is devoted to gay activists, something not even America has done or accomplished. There's also the Women's Jail on Constitution Hill, a monument to women who fought alongside men against apartheid. A South African lesbian activist asked me cynically as an American if I feel at home in South Africa like a lost daughter returned. Carefully because I've already been to Ghana and toured the jails used in slavery, I know the issues with Americans claiming an African homeland. Instead I say my activism started here, and that way I feel home. I can't imagine my life as a poet and activist if I had never seen Nelson and Winnie Mandela's fists raised in triumph at every sighting during that long, long, long, brutal war. If I hadn't seen Bishop Desmond Tutu unflinching in the eyes of a ghastly regime, I could never be who I am today. I would not have the courage. Today on New Year's Day I am weepy with grief of so many things lost. I struggle until I see that picture of Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently deceased, his hands thrust in the air, dancing with spirit. I remember myself that invictus spirit that lives on. I say bring on 2022. I'm ready. Welcome, Nonifolstein. Hello everyone. Thank you for coming out tonight. I would like to thank the Booker Museum for this evening, and I would like to thank Mac Books for publishing my work. Tonight I would like to dedicate this evening to my mother, Queen Elizabeth Simmons, and yes. And my daughter, Queen Ming, and my sister, Shannon Anita, aka the Duchess. And last but not least, my father, MacLean Simmons, whose family albums that he created seared themselves into my soul and my heart. And I can never, I think it was destined that I'd be a photographer after that soon. The White Shoes series was inspired by two enslaved women from the 19th century. Sarah Bartman here, aka Venus Hot and Tot, in Europe who was put on display against her will. And Delia Taylor on a plantation in South Carolina, whose daguerreotype was taken without her consent. The self portrait series document sites in the 200 plus years of slavery in New York City were enslaved and free African Americans, along with First Nation. And Lenape Indians lived, died, worked, or buried along with First Nation Indians. I dedicate, oh, I said, anyway, so going on. Excuse me. There's one image that I wanted to talk about before we have the discussion. And it gives you a little bit of insight and process. At dinner with Pamela, Justine, Kim and Patricia the night before, we spoke about my photo shoot the next morning. I would be photographing at three locations in Lower Manhattan and some of the last sites in the series. The second site is a really important one. The enslaved rose up and fought for their freedom. I don't know what to do for it. I'm kind of stuck. I don't have a plan. What do you think I should do? I said. Justine thought I should give a middle finger to the camera. I'm going to wear one of my hats. A couple more suggestions were thrown out, but none really landed for the situation, I thought. The middle finger for the camera though. It's out of character for the series. And talking to Shannon, she said, absolutely not. No. Look at what you've been saying and doing for the whole series. Just deserve the serious thoughtful response. So I thought I'll just bring everything I think I could need. Bring the hat that grounds me in the present, bring the musket, the pass, bring the peasant shirt, cut up the back. I'll be wearing the new one, but I can try both and see what works. The day was Sunday, 4th of July, 8 a.m. perfect. This was the second site that morning. First site, Thomas Downing Oyster's house in the heart of Wall Street. Went well. The only hiccup was waiting for a tour group to walk through it. A few nosies. Afterward, we spent a few moments figuring out which direction to walk. The streets are a maze from the old city. We found ourselves at William Street in Maiden Lane, the site of the slave rebellion of 1712. Marked by this huge fortress-like building that has its own four blocks, it reminds me of similar buildings in Florence, Italy. That's so interesting, I thought. I remember driving through here in a cab recently, I recalled. I hadn't done my usual surveillance of the surrounding architecture and landmarks before I arrived. But what are all these cop cars doing here? Maybe they're parked here for the holiday. Just be mindful. You better hurry up. The city's waking up and cars will be trouncing all through here before you know it. I set up the camera on the tripod in the middle of William Street in the direction of Wall Street. I can pose a shot. Shannon steps into the frame. I take a few pics of her. We pause for the occasional passing car. Moving the tripod out of the way, it's not the best light. Harbors onto a vertical frame. Ugh, I hate this part. I struggle to compose a shot in an overwhelming emotional situation. Aware of time, calm down, I tell myself. Stay calm now. Don't rush it. I hit the shut-off a few times. Okay, let's try this. Wait, who are these dudes coming? Shannon begins to give them dagger eyes. Okay, why are they hanging around? They turn down made in lanes, slowing up, waiting to get a shot of me. They knew who I am, Shannon. They better keep the effort. You're not gonna pick a heart today. Well, I have all my clothes on today. Sorry, nothing here to see. Okay, Shannon, I'm gonna get in the frame. Come behind the camera. Just wait, Nona. Just wait. They're still hanging around. My mind is racing. I don't have anything. Okay, they're gone. I grab the hat, grab the musket. I signal for her to hit the shutter. A series of clicks as I strike a series of poses. Okay, that's good. Let me see. We move over to the side and look at the playback. There's nothing here I like. It looks forced. The hat is throwing so much shade on my face. I didn't bring the reflector. I don't like the way I look in that shirt. It looks too new and all around. I look frumpy. There's no drama. Don't panic. Keep going. It takes a bit to get in the groove of things for the good accidents, slight movements, a tilt of the head, a specific look, the way the sky brightens, a pose that makes a shot. You have time. Keep working it. The magic will come. Let's turn the camera around toward the Brooklyn Bridge. The sun is rising, the tall buildings, sliver of sky, and the cop's car in the background. Real New York City. Open the frame wide. You can see the street signs in the frame. That's better. It marks the spot. Let's try it again. Step into the middle of the intersection. Hit it, Shan. A series of clicks for a series of poses. I check it. Hmm. I'm not feeling it. It's almost there. Just need something else. You know what? I'm going to change into the other shirt. Where do I do that? Looking around. There's a spot in the doorway of this humongous fortress. I push the shopping cart over with all my stuff, with my back to the street. I take off the bra and the shirt. There's a camera in the corner of the doorway. Oh, well. Lock it out. I got work to do. I put on the shirt that I wore for most of the series. It's cut down the middle. This time, I turn it to the front instead of the back. Shit. It doesn't come together enough for me to hold it tight with my hands. My boobs are too big. So how do I set up this camera with all of this going on? Lord, you know what? Just take it off. Simplify it. I said, I was done with the news. And exception can be made. Improvised. Think. Amazon. Dihoming female warriors. All these things rush into my mind at once. A dog walker. A couple getting out of lifts. More cars coming through the site. Wrap this sarong around your chest. Step into the frame. Battle ready. I step out of the doorway. Okay. We're going to have to do this quick. I drag the tripod in the spot. Praying the shot. I step into the middle of the intersection one final time. I take off the sarong. Throw it to Shannon. The tunnel vision happens. I turn off one set of my senses. And I focus on the camera. My hearing intensifies. I'm looking at the viewer. Suddenly I hear someone or something. Coming at me. Into the frame. On a motorized bicycle. Will they touch me? Don't look at him. I raise my arm with the musket. I hear man say, what the fuck? Get him. I yell to Shannon. Signaling to her. To keep her finger on the shutter. No, she yells. I don't want him in the shot. Something she never did before. I'm the photographer. You do what I tell you. Don't you ever do that again. She throws me the sarong. I come over to check the pics. Is he in there? No, not all of him. I would have taken all of him would have taken away from me too much. Just that slice of the city coming into the frame interrupting is actually perfect. What it means to shoot New York City to intersect the present and the past. There's the mystery of it too. It's done. I got it. I go back to the dressing room and put my shirt on. I go home. I look on the map. What was that building? The National Reserve Bank of New York? The place with the most gold any place in the world? I call my father up to tell him about the photo shoot. I know that place he says. Six was down in the ground. Men with machine guns. They rolled the gold right past you and you better not reach out and touch none of it. He says real quietly. They saw you. Damn. How close did I come to being involved in the incident? My thoughts of raising and pointing that musket in the air. How many cases of black Americans blown away for holding fake guns or no guns? Clearly they saw my unassuming shopping cart the tripod and camera. Just some harmless artists. If that had been a Monday morning and you tried that, the irony of that building on the site of a slave rebellion now. Africans epitomize a fight for freedom and democracy in America before 1776. I go back to that night on April 6, 1712 23 enslaved Africans rose up in a quest for their freedom armed with guns, axes, knives at an orchard or made in lane. They set fire to a shed at the home of Peter van Tilburg. They killed nine white slave owners before they stopped by before they were stopped by the militia. Once captured after running into a swamp at present day Canal Street accounts say up to 70 Africans were captured. Six committed suicide. 40 were brought to trial another was put in chains and starved to death. A pregnant woman was kept alive until she gave birth and was then executed. And the others were hanged. As a consequence the harshest slave coat were enacted but it wouldn't stop another from occurring in 1741. Thank you. So I'd like to bring up Pamela Sneed, Jessica Laney and Seth Rodney. Good evening everyone. How's everyone feeling? I have some questions for these brilliant writers and brilliant artists here. So my first question is for you, Nona. What was your experience like putting the book together? Usually photography in the world comes in different series and arrangements and different curatorial and pulses kind of take an effect on the work. But you have a lot of control over the publication itself. So it's a different kind of vulnerability because it's all the work together. And also how did you choose us to come into the catalog? What about our writerly voices made you invite us into your project? Well to begin with I have been thinking about making a book of these images for quite a while and it was just something I always thought about who would I want who would I want to contribute. And Pamela after I met her one night she came to an opening of mine on Satin Island and we hit it off and she gave me a book of hers King Kong and I read it and I was like I loved her and her work because we have this thing of pop culture we must have grown up watching a lot of TV movies, vogue, fashion I could just sense that in her writing right so there was that and then so she was just so dynamic she was number one on the list and then my dear Maurice Berger who passed a couple years ago at the beginning of the pandemic he was like also on that list and Seth Wadney definitely like he had written he was one of the first critics to write about the work and it was just natural that I picked him and then when I met you I was just so impressed by you being so young but so knowledgeable like you knew things about me that I didn't even know was out there and I was like oh and I thought it was important to have someone from the academic world scholar, historian for someone young you know who could set the tone and I could bring into the forefront not that you needed that but just so making the book it was like just it was so easy I don't know if I had no experience to base it on except that once you know my former instructor Justine Curlin who is here tonight are you here tonight Justine? She's one who along with Kim Boa as the higher pictures but she contacted me and she sent me a text and so she said I found someone and I hadn't even put that out there to her but I used to just say it to people so I want to make a book and so when she came to me and told me about Mac books that they had she had introduced them to my work and that Michael Mack was so impressed and wanted to make a book and then I had all the images, most of the images together and I was, it was about I wanted to round it out I had to hit all the five burls but I knew the sites I wanted to go to so he gave me the time to finish that I did and I gave him the sequence I told him the people that I wanted to write something for the book and all of you were contacted and then boom it just laid it out and it was done. The only part was the cover and even that was just a little hiccup and then you know the designer Morgan just hit it it just all flowed like it was meant to be it definitely was meant to be continuing on the vein of pop culture and vulnerability and your essay you make a very interesting surprising and engaging comparison to known as nude photography to Irene Adler and the British Broadcasting Corporation's version of Sherlock Holmes and there's this moment you describe Irene Adler disrobes when Sherlock Holmes is coming to investigate her and when he gets there he has no idea what to do because he can't read anything off of her nudity he's so shocked but that also read to me as an act of vulnerability and sometimes we underestimate how powerful vulnerability can be in interfering in violence or interfering in perspectives that are inaccurate about one's own being and self so could you talk a little bit more about that comparison and the power of the you know the naked power suit and how vulnerability is a part of that so part of the reason that I titled the the essay the naked power suit is that I think that's the term that Irene Adler uses she talks about there's a moment in the show where she's sort of wondering out loud what should I wear because I need to thwart this person he's a threat and she decides that she's going to wear her power suit and that's the way she talks about it and it came to me that in thinking about Nona's work that yes you're absolutely right in identifying that there is an aspect of vulnerability but there's you know vulnerability indeed can be a kind of power because what you are doing I think or what let me be clear what Nona's doing in these moments where she's publicly putting herself on display she's allowing herself to be seen in a way that we typically don't it's like I kept thinking when we talk about this tonight there would be this interesting moment when I would think what would it be like to be naked right here right now at this moment it's it actually never too late Seth it's never too late working it makes me think that there's a way in which performance art really kind of brings all these sort of issues together because had a conversation with Kamau Bell a few years ago and he said all you have to do in order to create performance art is you have to be present and transgressive Nona's present and transgressive and that is a easy kind of vulnerability clearly because you don't know what will happen in fact I want to read something because I've thought about this poem a lot with your work Nona I may have mentioned it in a review I've written I don't remember it I'm trying to get my phone on my jacket but it's a poem by Lucille Clifton and I think it's called if I stand in my window I figure you all would be familiar with this but you all out here may not be so please allow me if I stand in my window naked in my own house and press my breasts against the window pane like black birds pushing against glass because I am somebody in a new thing a man come to stop me in my own house naked in my own window saying I have offended him I have offended his gods let him watch my black body push against my own glass let him discover self let him run naked through the streets crying praying in tongues so there is that like this work I see that that performativity I see that vulnerability I see that power and I see that transgression and all of these things have made to work for me uniquely resonant and Pamela you write in your essay poem essay your hybrid work in the monograph I understand that part of artistry where one becomes also a shaman medium and vessel and that's in response to you viscerally feeling known as work how does your writing process help you access the same historic intimately personal and like social um spark point okay that's a little hard okay I've written about slavery for a really long time like that's the first book that I wrote was called imagine being more afraid of freedom than slavery and I was like 27 years old in that regard I kind of know the magic that one starts to access and the spirituality and all of that when you start to do ancestral work right and I think certain people are called to do it or it was interesting I teach at Columbia and I was talking to a student and he said well I want to and he's a black student and he said that he wanted to go around to different sites and that's to start collecting the water that black people were bathed in, walked in and all that and I was like talk to shamans talk to you know and he was like oh my god right but I was happy that I was there because I understood not only the intellectual pursuit but also the spiritual pursuit you know what I mean like that's not it's not an ordinary quest right it's a calling yeah it's a call and so in that regard I mean that's my relationship to Nona's work I mean I saw I think it was an article in hyper allergic like years ago I think it was like the first one and she was standing I think that first photograph that you showed when you're on Black Wall Street was it there? Wall Street yeah I think that was the first one that I ever saw and I was like oh my god this woman is amazing you know what I mean and it was time you know that it was it felt like so it wasn't just something that I intellectually looked at and thought oh you know that's great I just I felt it in my balance I mean I used to take my students to the African burial grounds right and you know people didn't even know you know that the African burial ground exists right and it could be like really kind of corny but it's actually brilliant right and steps away from the 9-11 museum right and so the interesting thing is that no one knows about the African burial or very few know you know but I used to take my students and I would take you know black women white people but it was interesting like some of the black women I took would get the spirit you know they started talking in tongues and like they're like oh my god you know and so again and they were like professor you know thank you for taking us here you know so I have to say that like doing that work because I've done that work for a long time it was like an immediate kind of like verification with Nona you know I mean I remember like I was like oh my god I want to help sell it I want to you know I was like doing things that I don't even you know do and yeah I just I thought it was brilliant and so and I'm glad that the times are kind of catching up now and they're starting to tell our stories right like you know even a couple of like 10 years ago I was in grad to my MFA and it was a white woman who worked on Broadway and she was like and I was talking about slavery and she was like that story's never been told you know and I was like this is a white woman saying that right and and so it's been a really like incredibly suppressed history right and so finally like the moments are coming that we can begin to discuss it and so that like it feels like Nona is just like right on time and there's a lot of people who see that living embodiment right and so because I listen to that I listen to that spirit you know I don't know if I'm like you know a religious person or something like that but but I've always gotten hooked up with like with ancestral work right and so seeing that and then also seeing the contemporary because there's an interesting thing you know she's back in Central Park Seneca Village and she's reading a book right and that was the thing that we were forbidden to do right but here's you know Nona sitting with a big hat in Seneca Village you know reading a book right and having tea right oh yeah this one this one and so it's this incredible act of reclaiming right this is not what we were allowed to do so here is like a contemporary person who's back in there saying here I am a black woman and I'm sitting on this lawn you know what I mean and so there's a brilliance and there's also this play to your point about visibility and invisibility you know and I always play with that because we've been all these slave women all the slave history has been rendered invisible right and so here comes Nona and she physicalizes that right so it's so in a way we've been made invisible and then she's rendering us visible you know she's rendering the black woman visible so there is that interplay between the vulnerable and also the affront you know like okay you tried to you know kill me you tried to you know erase me you tried to rape me and destroy me and here I am in my power you know in 2022 you know standing at a former slave site and then the other thing is is that we've survived you know it's this incredible actor survival that generations now you know that we came through the most heinous one of the most heinous crimes you know in history and basically you know have lived to tell and to embody it. Thank God. Hallelujah. Actually I just wanted to say that there's something about that visibility thing I wanted to pursue which is there's a way in which known as hyper visible which I think is kind of key to her work and hyper visible but outside of a particular framework so the framework in which we typically see black women hyper visible in the culture is when they're entertaining us right when they're singing when they're dancing not there's anything wrong with that but you're doing something which kind of carves out a space outside of this sort of profiteering from the entertainment industry which I think is really key it's like there's you're you're asking different you're asking us to do different work as readers right because we're quite used to really really good at being passive listeners and taking in people who look like you right who perform like we're really good at that but we're not so good at seeing a woman use her body in the way that you do to do something else to point in some other direction back to that to her ancestors back to these once repressed histories and that hyper visibility invites in other historic figures as well right in all of our essays we talk of we mention Harriet Tubman we mention Sarah Bartman we mention Fannie Lou Hammer we mention Sojourner Truth and so there's a way that the narrative of all of your photos together invites in those names that we know in those names that we don't know and so I wanted everyone to just kind of touch upon like what their personal experience was of writing those names down in their essays in relation to Nona's work Sarah Bartman you know writing about her seeing Nona you know in Sarah Bartman's you know presence and all of that I think you know it's poignant you know it's difficult I mean she was like what like kept her remains like her what her vagina was like in a bottle and a milder on view in Paris for like 200 years right Museum of Man and it was Nelson Mandela which I think is like a really powerful thing like Nelson Mandela said you know the first thing that he did was say you know I want like I want all of her remains you know taken off display and I want them to be shipped home right and so it was like an incredible act of like restitution and dignity and you know yeah and to like give this you know person a resting place so I mean it's an incredible history to you know to write about always and again it feels like call and then also thinking about like you know when she has the gun and it's like Harriet always had that gun she had that pistol you know what I'm saying and so there's that vulnerability but there's also that like there's the gangster you know what I mean like I will you know you know say you get on this train Harriet Tubman would shoot you if you told her you wanted to go back and yeah there was none of that and so I don't know I feel I feel emotional but I feel powerful it's an act of like reclaiming you know one of the things that I said in the essay was that we're also witnessing for the first time in my life that seeing like black women publicly say no you know like you know no my mental health means something no I'm not going to do this you know like what is it Naomi Osaka who else was it Simone black yeah like a whole bunch of people and like we've never been allowed to do that you know and so that's powerful to me and so I feel like in this lineage of women who now get to say no I feel that I've like led the way but I'm also still learning you know and I feel that you know Nona's book is a testament to that you know and people get mad when black women say no absolutely it's Simone Biles you know and Naomi Osaka I mean they took a lot of heat right but also when you take a stand you know people have the energy you know and like but going back to your question this one 74 canal with the journal truth is I was reading I was doing some research through this series and it was just shocking that I found her address when she lived in New York City and that Chinatown was a black community was an African-American community and so just that knowledge like that she lived in New York I mean all these things I never was taught in school you know and that John Brown also the great you know abolitionist and warrior you know also when he was killed they brought him to that neighborhood and then it all made sense you know why they brought him to that neighborhood to be once he was his body was recovered and I had to address and still but that whole neighborhood you know and just finding out and retracing like Harriet Tubman all the work that's been being done to find out where she lived and the roots that she took and her family's home in Maryland I mean just things that are so their life stories so valuable to us you know and it's still pioneering you know it's still pioneering you know I also think what you're doing too in doing that kind of work is you're establishing a genealogy I mean you talked about this Pamela that you can see yourself in a line of women who have publicly learned to say no and publicly found their kin their spiritual kin and people like Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer I think that that's really key there's a way in which we begin to suss out who we are in the world and the work that we can do by sort of pointing to that kind of ancestry by say you know it's a similar thing to saying realizing that one's father, one's mother was a writer or was a particularly good actor and there are those sort of traits that show up in greater lesser degree in your own life if you can point to your spiritual kin and see those traits you can begin to in some ways like make sense of yourself and make sense of your place in the world and what give yourself a better understanding of the work that you think you're called to do I also wanted to talk about one thing that's like really significant in your work to me is always the way like the light falls you know and that like the way that it oh ok well this I have to say that I always see the light as spirit right and I mean it's just beautiful the way that it appears and it reminds me of when I was at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana and at the Slay Fort and just talking about how that felt and everything and then I was reading online somebody said that when they left that there was a certain kind of light that had fallen on the castle you know and that they knew it was ancestral and I feel like every single time I look at your photographs I see like this particular light playing in a certain way I mean it was in your mother's face right like the show that was at higher pictures right with Kim yeah and it's just like the way that you capture this light or that this light kind of plays in I just feel like it's an interplay with a certain kind of like spirit ancestry something's going on but it's beautiful and it's golden and it illuminates everything I think that happened before I was even a photographer before I used to take pictures I used to see the light you know I always like you know shadows and lights and my dad as you know was an amateur photographer took all the family images and I would ask him you know take me out show me how to take pictures with your camera and you know he had a night con after precious night con after that he would not hardly let me I mean he took me out he set it up and then he said okay you could press the shutter and then he just let me press the shutter but I wanted to get my hands on the camera because I was always seeing you know paying attention to the light and shadows and so once that took off once I started you know in undergrad well I used to like sneak his camera after that I started sneaking it but really once I got in school in undergrad and started photographing exclusively in black and white that's where I really played with that and really saw that and wanted to capture a lot of that and even when I made the transition to color photography I continued to put that in the work and see that and then someone called it I didn't even really know I was doing it really until one of my classmates said you see light you know and I was like yeah like look at it in the window there there's this gold light that kinda you know what I mean it's just like it's a whole other presence that's there and so I just started using that and paying attention to that because I don't like to use flash and of course natural light it just it's just natural to my soul and I always shoot natural light always look for that you know where's the light coming from what does that mean but also when I'm out in the field I'm looking for signals you know especially in the series I'm always looking for signals in the land telling me where I should go what's here something important happened here something you know just feeling that energy of a place that was once inhabited by my people and Harriet Tubman speaks to that and in one of the images I used her whole quote for that because she tells you if I can find it there's a long quote but here it is there are a few markers left for your black body as a marker the land does hold the memory of your existence you only have to put it there in its natural state to remember Harriet Tubman and so I just like always paying attention to the land and the natural environment what's that telling me and the light is part of it can I just throw out one more name and Margaret Garner absolutely yes and just thinking about like with you with the pistol and then thinking about well Tony Morrison is definitely also this work right but so thinking about Margaret Garner you know ready to kill a kid rather than have them go back into slavery but this idea of you standing there with the pistol with the arm and it could be Margaret Garner made flesh a monument to Margaret Garner I have a question about poetry poet you've read poetry and in our interview in the book you talk a lot about the influence that historic information had on you but also fiction as well as poetry and throughout the book we've had conversations about how the photos are organized one of the questions I didn't make it in was well how did you organize them but in the edit the question came out and so I'm thinking about black narratives and art and how we often can't rely on prose because prose is also connected to structures of history and so much has been buried and even though so much is coming to light usually what it reveals to us as black people is that there's so much more digging to do or there's a new perspective that needs to be given of certain other people who were writing about people who are in our spiritual family as Steph said so I want everyone to kind of talk about like poetry in this process because I know for me I was reading a lot of Jane Cortez June Jordan I was like going back to Toy Dericott you know who's a co-founder of Kavekanum and I was really just going back to those poems that in what's happening in them there's this simplicity of action but what what they're feeling is that tension of potential disappearance so that's what poetry meant to me as I was getting ready to write for the book what about the two of you well one thing I want to say about the sort of history of US American poetry is that there was a moment in the 60's and 70's where you have women like such as Lucio Clifton Sonia Sanchez really bringing a kind of robust powerful black femininity to to the conversation around contemporary poetry and so for me when I first think I'm actually you don't know this Jessica I don't know if you know this but I'm a lapsed poet I actually used to write years and years ago back in my early 20's and then I'm also a lapsed photographer so all of these things sort of hugely resonate with me but with regard to poetry specifically I think that one of the things that happens to me because I did read a lot of poetry and used to write is that and it happened less and so I'll be at hyper allergic seven years in May it happens less and less now but when I first started writing it used to happen more that I would walk into an exhibition and I would see the work and immediately it would bring up a poem and I would recall something and that happened with your work so I actually I think I don't know if I wrote about it but I know that that Lucille Clifton poem I read came to me when I saw your work well it's funny that you cite her because she is one of the writer female writers that I read you know and I had never heard of her and I don't know I think how I discovered her is maybe when she died because she I think she died recently and I must have read an article and then I said you know it's when you read her work she just grabs you she has this incredible presence on the page and I was like I have to get everything she wants and I got like at least five of her books and I was trying to read everything you know I don't think I finished it but yeah so that was funny when I read that in the review that you cite at her and I was like same page I mean it's hard for me to like really kind of suss out what poetry means because I live and breathe poetry I mean that's the way I see the world you know what I mean and I think of known as work as poetry I think that there's a real relationship between visual art and poetry in that they both rely on the image you know they both don't rely on description on that visual image and so that's the relationship I'm always talking to Nona about writing you know she was she says you're a writer I'm like no I'm not you're absolutely a writer yeah she's a writer she's coming to it anyway yeah so it's hard to think about like you know just I don't know I teach poetry is not a luxury you know I talk about that every day by Audre Lord you know poetry is not a luxury it's the essence of our beings you know it's the way that we understand the world it's the way that we survive it's the way that we name things so I look at everything through that lens and I was I was reading at the beginning of the series I was reading a book of poems by female poets and writers about Venus hot and hot and I used to walk around with that book I was in grad school and I used to come into the classroom and one of my teachers David Deacher he he noticed it like more and he was like um every time you come into the classroom you have that book with you and I was like oh really you know like I'm kind of a blonde sometimes you know I don't even pay attention to like you know some things that I'm doing sometimes but then later on I do get it like oh that's why I was doing that or somebody will say something you know and so yeah that book was with me like the whole first year of grad school and you know because I was a mom and doing like this rigorous you know grad school program it took me that like a whole semester to get through the book you know so when I have free time on the subway or in class I would be reading it you know do you want to say one more thing about the relationship between poetry and visual art that I think is really key and I've said this before in criticism that I've written or talks that I've given poetry is really a good lever for opening up visual art because poetry is the language of attention you will not find a human being on the planet who is paying more attention to the thing they are writing about than a poet like the very intricate fugitive clandestine details of a thing like why it exists and how it has come to be poets talk about that and so poetry is like for me it's just a natural fit with art criticism right it's about looking right it's about a really careful and close looking there's a photo that we all wrote about I'm wondering if we can see it so we can all have an opportunity to talk about it it's a photo of you standing in the woods with the pistol and it looks like you just shot it but it's actually snow laying in the crevice of the tree and it looks like smoke it's called lobbying the gods for a miracle lobbying the gods for a miracle and that's part of the Leffertown series right well the series within a series yeah right here there it is thank you what was it about this photo for me what caught my attention was I was really just trying to figure out if you had fired that gun because I was like it's cold so that means the smoke is going to be more compressed as it comes out of the gun I realized that it's the snow kind of laying in the broken part of the tree and for me there was just such an immediacy here and there's like a braiding of time and it's a very conspicuous braiding of time and that became what I wrote about in my essay I cried power because what the poetry I was thinking about when I wrote it with me is Timon and that I ran so I run to the rock please hide me I run to the rock please hide me in the rock that I ain't going to hide shout and I thought about that song in particular because I thought about in the contemporary context when black women and femmes are running there are so many ways that we cannot be held or hid or helped because it puts the people who would in danger as well right but even from that conundrum we still find even though we shouldn't like we shouldn't have to be strong but we do and so that's what made me start with that photo because it just brought so much music and noise to me and you're literally looking like which way do I go you're so in that moment so that's what brought me to the photograph you also wrote about the photograph and so did you well I just want to talk about that belt of baby shoes and what that could possibly mean or be so that's like powerful too you know like the baby you know the children's white shoes you know what I'm saying there's so many layers to that and so much interpretation I mean when I created that image you know it's three it's like a triptych around the left left house that's Parsford Park and that specifically is near the boat house and we went there you know I specifically had that image in mind the idea I mean Henry Louis Gates did a series on slavery and I don't know whether it's from his series or where I heard but they said that in places in the woods in particularly the south you could still hear women crying for their children that were stolen like that's how much the land absorbed their cries and sorrows of them being torn apart from their children that if you're quiet at a certain point and a certain place in time in these woods you can still hear their cries and when I was doing research on the left left house what stood out to me was some of their enslaved women some of the names the names of their enslaved on a list and that also they said at Christmas and New Year's was the most horrible time to be a slave person because your children will be sold off or you will be sold from your children given as gifts and presents and so I wanted to speak an image that spoke to that a woman who had decided to leave to flee to as many women did Harriet Tubman she brought women with children with her on those escape routes and so I wanted an image that spoke to that a woman who decides to flee a woman who has children you know and so that's how but the day we went to shoot this image it had just snowed and I didn't know where I was going but I knew I wanted to go in that area because a lot of history has transpired in Prospect Park that's a revolutionary war site there still remains of revolutionary soldiers in Prospect Park and so also the idea of we were there in that history was important to place us there to place for me to be there and so I just found that tree and just thinking about you know when people flee they would use all of the land to hide in to rest in a log a rotten tree or you know a cave or just any place to rest for a while and so that's how I came upon that and I saw that tree and I was like you know and then we started working around it yeah yes why did you choose to write about this photo oh I think because I've written about this idea before that there's a way in which the gun figures really prominently American stories of were essentially in a kind of white settler heroism it's the power of in fact we talked about it on our podcast not too long ago one of the things we concluded in that conversation was that there's a way in which certain kind of men and women feel that the gun makes them immortal that they hold on to that power of the gun they're very very afraid of any sort of legal or judicial intervention between what they think of as their right to defend themselves and of people's rights to be safe in public because they feel like they will never die if they have the gun in their hand and I wanted what I think intrigued me about this image is that that idea is being turned on its head because it feels to me like this hero the hero that is in this image is not about like this chest beating no one's going to trample on my freedom kind of person she's looking to lead to rescue other people she's looking to find someone else to take with her so there's a different kind of heroism that's being modeled here and that was really intriguing to me and also what does it mean when a black woman specifically has a gun you know exactly you don't see that we don't often see that that is true well we're also ready for questions from you all so there are microphones to the right and left of you and if you will regale us with your comments or your questions we'll be happy to answer them don't be shy don't be shy well I'll be selfish one of my favorite images that I didn't get an opportunity we'll let you think a minute but I didn't get an opportunity to write about is she gave them everything and still they asked for more it won't hoard for some reason they cut me off but yeah okay let me see if I can get to it it's in the front it's in the front thank you so much I can't get away from the idea of the crevices in the land and the way in which the land is so active in all of your photographs and I really want to hear more about how the land acts or how you see the land acting in the shelter in the crevices of travel but also historically how that land has been used yeah that's a really good question you know I love landscapes I love landscape painting I love landscape photography and this series was my way of bringing that into portraiture and the land is really all we have after everything has been erased you know the history of African Americans have been so tampered with and erased and so like I said that quote of Harriet Tubman that guided me you're looking for markers you're looking for structures you're looking for places where we live but because we're constantly being uprooted and pushed out of off the land off communities highways being erected right through African American communities and disrupting decades of building community but the land still holds the memory of us and so it's my way of putting us back there saying you know we were here you know and after you know part of me in putting the series together was that one day I won't be here and my community won't be here and they'll be looking for us and hopefully these pictures will tell you we were here and just to also continue just thinking about the landscape right when we think about our contemporary life and how it looks materially the things we buy the things we own the buildings we go to what streets are named and where streets are laid what we often miss is that all of it certain people more than others is a product of rampant dispossession and murder of indigenous and Native American peoples from Canada all the way down to Patagonia right in Argentina and the bodies that were used to dispossess that land via cash crop interrupting indigenous cultivation were black individuals who were taken and sold away from their home and so from the Louvre from the museum to Orsay the rebuilding of Paris in the mid to late 19th century that all came from the disruption of the world via the transatlantic slavery modern banks that we contemporary banks we know of insurance companies began so they could insure land taken from Native Native American indigenous bodies insure black individuals being forcibly shipped from their homes into this new reality and so we take it for granted but almost every single thing that we understand about modernity can be traced back to that massive wealth that was accrued there and one other thing also what triggered I mean I knew that like I said the basics of what I wanted to do and when you're talking about these sites that's it but I was on the train one day and I stuck up a conversation with this woman and she even understood of course she was a white woman and she understood clearly and she said the land is crying out she said there's so much blood in the land the land is crying out there you go and so I knew I was like on that right path you know what I was discussing and wanted to show we have a question hey good evening everybody so I just want to say thank you but also two things a litany for survival by Audre Lorde definitely spoke and also I'm seeing it's interesting that I see you in these pieces as Allegba and so we're confronting Allegba we have to because your that confrontation then is becoming our way to communicate with what we're seeing on the page but also with the story with those accesses in the archives with the stories with the research and so you then have become Allegba in this photograph and stripped away all the other things and for me you essentialized who Allegba is because in the confrontation and in that that's communicating if this is a word I'm a dancer I can and for our audience just context Baba Allegba is a guardian of the crossroads that has origins primarily in Yoruban culture which is from southwestern Nigeria and he was one of the original kind of spirits God's ancestors that came down to guard the crossroads in all transitions and so he rules reality and nothing gets done in ceremony or at all until you call him and he opens the door for all the other ancestors to have a communication with the individual or community that's calling upon them so you're creating doorways in your work and like this work especially for me this just stands out from the rest of the series so richly because it's I can't even my whole body responding but I just can't find the words this one was in tribute to my great grandmother Martha who my mom had told me so much alike she died when my mom was a little girl but she made such an impression on her and that is a Dan mask that I bought from the Booker Museum's gift shop when I used to work here and I use everything that I have around me just as I respond to something I bring it you know and so that's how and that's in the botanical garden across the street does it have another question I have a question I'm sorry if it might be obvious but I'm just wondering what is the meaning of the white shoes amazing question thank you every time I do a talk or go anywhere someone asks me that question and I want to you know I started telling people what it means but then I started saying well what do you think it means and a few times that I did people gave me their answers and they were pretty much correct I'll take a wild guess yeah I had something to say about the white shoes so if I could jump in for a second because I look at the book a lot of times and of course I'm obsessed with the white shoes but the photograph with the baby shoes it was the first time tonight that I realized that those are also white shoes so that's what I want to say and then I was also interested in your white boots that you're wearing tonight and they're fabulous but go ahead give me your answer to what you think the white shoes is I wonder is it kind of playing into the quote unquote traditional idea of whiteness as purity kind of juxtaposed with this idea of darkness as not pure I like that I like that I like that I thought everybody here knows what the white shoes is I think I said it so much so the white shoes specifically when I came up with the idea I needed something that spoke about the effects of whiteness on the black body of white, well western beauty ideals on black female body or you know just what we could not get away from in our life and just all around the world of that oppression on the black body and so you know but also I saw the white shoes as proper lady shoes you know when I first saw them in the window on Payless Payless indeed I was like oh those are shoes like church shoes like you used to wear for Easter in the black church black women the sisters that were all white the elders and that's the thing that constantly growing up was being a proper lady keep your legs closed and so all those things came rushing back and I was like oh those are the shoes like you would see Queen Elizabeth wear and that just was like yes that's the symbol of the west you know in many ways and that effect on us as black women all of that but I was reading Fenon and black looks white mask and that also just once I saw the ultimate symbol to me it also reminds me of Deborah Willis's commentary in her book on the black female figure she writes about how in when photography kind of became a more popular thing often times black models would be invited in to highlight white women sitters as if to make the suggestion that there's an innate quality of unattractiveness or undesirability in black women that would enhance the beauty of white women in these photographs and we see it from Manet and Impressionism when we think of Olympia and we see the servant leaning in with the flowers to offer to the model herself who's laying across a white sheet that's kind of blue and then her skin is also white and so when I look at those shoes I also think of that commentary from Willis as well and think about those juxtapositions that were large as a way to enhance beauty in art history like just plainly plainly so and then there's layers to it that I still find new things that the white shoes reference that when I was conceiving of it in the quickness and hurryness of creation you don't like really think out but after said and done boom you know it all comes in anyone else last chance last chance last copper yes thank you hi I have a question it's more technical maybe it's about locations how did you choose locations like it's on one hand you can take pictures everywhere like in New York but on the other hand there are not so many places known for like people in the and another question about the locations did you ever get in trouble or were like denied access because some of these places have gates around yeah the reading and research I started researching the topic of African-Americans in New York City history when I was in undergrad long time many moons ago and it was out of a frustration of you know all these people of color all these black people here like why aren't we in the curriculum where did we come from where did we live you know like tell me the history and so I started digging and I did a research paper and then after that places would just jump out at me you know like I was reading Frederick Douglass biography and he places himself literally on the corner of Les Bernard and church when he first he says this literally when he first came to New York City I'm standing on this corner of Les Bernard and church across from David Ruggles house the abolitionist and I was like you know and so like that when you start to read about a place and you read about the people who lived in that place they begin to name streets they name places and not I mean even there were great many incidents of riots and you know all kinds of events that took place and people named streets and so that was how I would and then sometimes I would just look for it you know I would just do the research you know and go to the archives and look it up online and just find it and now there's so many people who are filling in the gaps and we're all doing that you know there's filmmakers but there's writers poets that are all scholars historians that are all trying to fill in the gaps and place us there and give you a more fuller history of African-American contribution Chinese contribution I mean my daughter is half Chinese and they're in California I mean all over in New York City there's great contributions by so many people and groups and they're being erased so that's how I find so did I did I ever have an incident or be no I really try I really believe that there was someone protecting me or something protecting me when I would go out in the streets one day I was that tweet the tweet court house going up the steps that that shot it was 18 degrees that morning and it's perfect for me because I was like ain't nobody gonna be out there you know I prefer winter but my bones don't love it anymore but anyway I was you know we got out and I knew that was a high surveillance area you know police won all the courthouse so when we got out and I was I set up the camera and everything I'm about to take my coat to do the shot and here come a police officer coming down the block and I was like and I turned like that and he just he didn't he never saw me he just kept on going and so you know that was the only only time I got close but I knew not to push it like you know where I was like look they're probably looking at you right now and saying she's got five minutes before we come down there on her I could feel that one I could feel it and so that's why I just hurried up and then said let's go we got it and then I but I had to do another shot so I went back oh but there was one time oh yeah yeah this is this is the one time that I almost got caught it was at supreme court 60 center street and as you know that there's a booth there on the side where the police officer is so the first time we went there it was like five six o'clock in the morning and two officers was on this in front of the courthouse I was like will they leave will they won't leave okay and Shannon was like as soon as you take off your coat they're on you so we had to leave that day we came back with my neighbor two classmates and we did this thing where the two classmates who were South African was in talking to the police officer in the booth trying to distract him you got it go back to 60 center street and you can see you could almost see it in my face that where I see it you wouldn't know what's going on but I see it's in the beginning and so they're distracting him yeah they're distracting him while my neighbor is literally standing on the other side of that railing so she's right in the line with me so he can't see me and then Shannon with the tripod is in the front and so I never felt like I really got that this nailed it that you know so I went back again and this time we didn't need any of the strike because I was a real veteran then you know and felt this site so I set up the tripod she got here you know she got in front of the tripod or behind the tripod I got in front of the camera and so then I just took the coat off and threw it and she hit the shutter when I told her to hit the shutter and I could hear him go like he's calling for the troops I mean I could hear you know and it's when your senses when your eyes can't do the work your hearing gets super intense you know it's true I could hear him calling for everybody and I said and so then I calmly walked down the steps picked up my coat put it on and a cab was coming right down center street and I was like and I jumped in the cab and it jumped in and I and the cab driver was this young Chinese man and I don't know how much he saw but when I got in the cab he turned around and he looked like like what is going on what is going on and so another time I was in a cab and I was going past there maybe a few days later they had the cop car on the sidewalk waiting for me like let her come back we gonna get her and I was like not today give it up one more time for Nona Fausti and thank you so much to Jessica Lanay, Pamela Sneed and Seth Rodney for joining us this evening please we invite you to stick around and if you have not purchased a copy of white shoes please do please support this important artist you can do so up on the stage and then if you stick around Nona will also be signing and personalizing copies by the way I'm Lauren I'm the director of public programs for the museum and I just want to thank all of you for coming out tonight thank you again for joining such an incredible artist and you've really had such a treat today to hear this behind the scenes of making the artwork so please come back discover more artists with us if you aren't busy next Thursday we still have some tickets left for our upcoming Brooklyn Reads event with a Quakey Amese and Nick Stone on the 17th and then on the 24th we'll be celebrating the year of the tiger with our art history happy hour theme to our Asian art collection so do come back and we'll see you in the galleries and of course please join us if you'd like to purchase a book get home safe everyone thank you the books are signed already actually but if you'd like