Image: Brooklyn Museum, New York
The Brooklyn Museum’s October 23 convening will bring together artists, activists, and scholars to examine the unrealized promises of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The event asks what strategies for justice can be enacted to move toward those unrealized promises. Its sessions will address migration, reproductive justice, mass criminalization, climate change, incarceration, abolitionist futures, and self-determination.
The convening critically examines who has historically benefited from the story of US democracy and considers how to build expansive futures rooted in self-determination, dignity, and freedom. It is part of 'Drawing America: US@250' and is copresented in partnership with Creative Time.
One conversation considers migration through the right to life, including freedom of movement, safety, belonging, and home-making, while situating contemporary struggles for migrant justice within longer histories of colonialism, racism, and exclusion. Presenters will draw on art, data, and organizing to envision futures beyond borders. The migration conversation features Mona Chalabi, illustrator and writer; Sky Hopinka, visual artist and filmmaker; Paola Ramos, journalist; and Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, scholar and director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies.
Another conversation recontextualizes the constitutional promise of freedom through an abolitionist lens, moving from conceptual art to community processes for accountability. Its speakers imagine alternatives to the US culture of punishment and caging that seek justice and repair. The incarceration conversation features American Artist, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Mariame Kaba, and Jackie Wang.
Participants include Mona Chalabi, Sky Hopinka, American Artist, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Tega Brain, Sam Lavigne, Johanna Hedva, Dean Majd, Viva Ruiz, and Nicole Sealey.
