Making and Being: Healing and Care

BFAMFAPhD presents Making and Being, a series of conversations that ask: What ways of making and being do we want to experience in art classes? The series places artists and educators in intimate conversation about forms of critique, cooperatives, artist-run spaces, healing, and the death of projects. These conversations about Art & Pedagogy are co-presented by BFAMFAPhD & Pioneer Works, hosted by Hauser & Wirth, covered by media partners Eyebeam and Bad at Sports. The fourth installment of this series will focus on healing and care. How do artists ensure that their individual and collective needs are met in order to dream, practice, work on, and return to their projects each day? The conversation will include Adaku Utah and Taraneh Fazeli.   Adaku Utah was raised in Nigeria armed with the legacy of a long line of freedom fighters, farmers, and healers. Adaku harnesses her seasoned powers as a liberation educator,healer, and performance ritual artist as an act of love to her community. Alongside Harriet Tubman, she is the co-founder and co-director of Harriet's Apothecary, an intergenerational healing collective led by Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healers, artists, health professionals, activists and ancestors. For over 12 years, her work has centered in movements for radical social change, with a focus on gender, reproductive, race, and healing justice. Currently she is the Movement Building Leadership Manager with the National Network for Abortion Funds. She is also a teaching fellow with BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity) and Generative Somatics. Taraneh Fazeli is a curator from New York. Her multi-phased traveling exhibition “Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism’s Temporal Bullying” deals with the politics of health. It showcases the work of artists and groups who examine the temporalities of illness and disability, the effect of life/work balances on wellbeing, and alternative structures of support via radical kinship and forms of care. The impetus to explore illness as a by-product of societal structures while also using cultural production as a potential place to re-imagine care was her own chronic illnesses. She is a member of Canaries, a support group for people with autoimmune diseases and other chronic conditions.   About the co-presenters and media partners: BFAMFAPhD is a collective that employs visual and performing art, policy reports, and teaching tools to advocate for cultural equity in the United States. Pioneer Works Press publishes a range of publications that foster experimental ways of thinking, and seeks to advance the dissemination of the arts through publication and recorded sound. Drawn from programs at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, all editions can be found at pioneerworks.org. Contemporary art talk without the ego, Bad at Sports is the Midwest's largest independent contemporary art podcast and blog. Eyebeam is a platform for artists to engage society’s relationship with technology.   Access info: The event is free and open to the public. RSVP is required through www.hauserwirth.com/events. Address: 151 West 30th Street is between 6th and 7th Avenues, near 7th. Nearby Subways include the 1,2,3, A, C, and E trains at Penn Station on 34th St, and the B, D, F M, Q, ad R trains at Herald Square on 34th at 6th Ave. Both of these stations are wheelchair accessible. The building entrance, elevators, and 4th floor restrooms have no steps and are fully wheelchair accessible. If you require additional assistance upon arrival, please ring the buzzer outside and someone will come down to help you get up to the 4th floor. For people with chemical sensitivities, we request that you come low or no scent. Note: incense is regularly burnt in the space, but it will have been incense-free for three days before the event. However, there is a possibility it will linger. The incense burned in the space is free of chemical additives. There are no fluorescent lights, children and care dogs are welcome and allowed. For seating we have plastic molded chairs, zafu and zabuton meditation cushions (square and round), and yoga mats. If you are choosing to come and need other seating, please let us know by emailing us at susan.e.jahoda@gmail.com by February 25th. The bathrooms are gender neutral. There will be minimal photographs taken to document the event but anyone can request not to be photographed.