During the spring and summer of 2024, Arts + Public Life brought together seven Black and Brown queer artists from a variety of disciplines to explore the history, present, and future of Black queer art-making spaces in Chicago. Together they formed the Never So Free: Black Queer Art + Assembly 2024 cohort. In hearing from and connecting with those who’ve had a hand in supporting and creating these spaces, the artists have fostered a vibrant community and embraced the imperative of how dreaming can help sustain artistic vision and empower persistence.
Join the artists of the Never So Free: Black Queer Art + Assembly 2024 cohort for a public exhibition that transforms the Green Line Performing Arts Center into a multi-sensory dream experience.
This program is the culmination of a 3-part series of offerings created by the Never So Free artists this fall. Drawing from the exploration of lost, current, and liminal spaces paired with the spaces we create for dreaming, Never So Free: Black Queer Art + Assembly offerings delve deeper into the dream space, exploring the different perspectives of and energies that encompass dreaming. The series invites intentional community building and expansion to emphasize the political imperative of dreaming and imagination to our collective liberation, especially during this fraught political and cultural moment.
In Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Robin D. G. Kelley writes, “Knowing the color of the sky is far more important than counting clouds. Or to put it another way, the most radical art is not protest art but works that take us to another place, envision a new way of seeing, perhaps a different way of feeling.” This is no easy feat in a culture that purposefully limits imagination. To move into a new way of seeing and a different way of feeling, we must first confront the Dream Thief. –-Kemi Alabi, Never So Free artist
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An initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art in partnership with artists and organizations across the city, Art Design Chicago is a series of events and exhibitions that highlight the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
