Events
Voices of the Ancestors: An Evening with Mara the Storyteller
Panga ya Saidi cave, Kilifi County, Kenya—where ancient stories whisper through time.
Reparations In Public Space: Reclaiming Sacred Ground
Reparations in Public Space: Reclaiming Sacred Ground
Immersive Art Exhibition
Experience powerful artworks by Ifeoma Ebo (Creative Urban Alchemy) and narratives by poet Antoinette Cooper (Black Exhale) that reimagines public spaces as sites of healing, rest, and community-actualization.
This rest exhibition weaves together Artificial Intelligence through Midjourney images, Ancestral Intelligence from New York’s African Burial grounds, alchemy through quilting, and liberation through language.
We invite you to treat the exhibition space as a "third place" beyond home/work/school—a communal respite to experience interdependence with the land and each other. While visiting, please daydream with the quilted artwork, leave an offering of your words at the Reclamation Altar, and support the vendors at the Flatbush Central Caribbean Marketplace.
Opening: Reparations in Public Space
How can we reclaim rest in a world built on unrest?
Join us for the opening of "Reparations in Public Space: Reclaiming Sacred Ground," an immersive exhibit that reimagines public spaces as sites of healing and remembrance. Through speculative design, poetic narratives, and community participation, the exhibit honors the historical wounds of African Burial Grounds while envisioning more liberatory futures for the collective.
RSVP for the opening event on June 15, 2024, 6-8pm ET, will feature:
Guided meditation and reflections led by community healers
Embodied movement with Kierra Foster-Ba from Shaking Spirit Waves
Collective altar-building to honor ancestors and sacred spaces
Interactive art installations inviting participants to share their visions for reparative public spaces
Nourishing refreshments provided by local Black-owned businesses
Welcome remarks from Rita Joseph, District 40 NYC Council Member
Workshop: Reparations in Public Space
In partnership with Creative Urban Alchemy please join us in collectively reimagining spaces of trauma in NYC in order to transform the lands into healing spaces for the Black community. On Friday, October 20th we begin with a trauma-informed conversation, followed by a community-engaged design workshop using the Midjourney AI program to develop imaginary ideas for the Flatbush African Burial Ground in central Brooklyn. Here we will make sanctuary.
Register and learn more about the event here.
The Black Exhale Nest Gallery Exhibition
The Black Exhale Nest will be moved into the Weeksville Heritage Center gallery space for the remainder of June.
When not being used for private portrait and interview sessions for participants, the Black Exhale Nest will be open for public viewing tours, along with projected images and narratives in the gallery.
Come to learn more about the sanctuary space of Weeksville, and how we continue to create sanctuary in a paradigm that is still learning how to love the Black body. Come to embrace your own fugitivity as part of this liberation work. Come to understand why even the trees are a necessary part of our collective healing. Come to practice the distinction between witness, voyeurism, gaze and the other ways of looking.
Share your thoughts in a survey here.
The Black Exhale Nest Community Contribution Day at Weeksville
Community members are invited to make a contribution and offering to the Black Exhale Nest and the collective creation of sanctuary. There will be branches on-site to add to the Black Exhale Nest, or you can feel free to bring a flower, a prayer, a whisper, or a song.
Our Community Contribution Day will also include sound healing and a shamanic drum journey to invoke and receive the blessings and love of the ancestors as we prepare the Black Exhale Nest to witness, hold and transmute our collective ancestral wounds.
Building the Black Exhale Nest at Weeksville
The Black Exhale Nest build begins at Weeksville Heritage Center, located at 158 Buffalo Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, with youth participation from Recess Art’s Assembly program. 11am - 2pm each day.
Using organic materials gathered from Hudson, NY, and a former slave plantation in Virginia, artist and nest builder from the Nest Project will be collectively, and in community, creating sanctuary space to support healing the Black body.
Black Bodies Heal
This meditation gathering isn’t solely about finding your calm or being silent enough to hear the birds chirping. This gathering is about...
creating sanctuary for the Black body so that we can practice fully surrendering to a future full of possibilities!
sharpening intentions, elevating emotions, and getting beyond your exquisite body so that you can heal your body.
Black folk stepping into the supernatural, individually, and as a collective.
creating a melanated collective energy that can amplify your internal experience to be greater than any external environment!