INSIDE VOICES: MAKING SPACE OPENING EVENT FOR "QUEENS OF NEW ORLEANS" WITH YOUTH EMPOWERMENT PROJECT
5:30PM - FRI APR 21, 2017
FREE - THREE KEYS, NEW ORLEANS
INSIDE VOICES: MAKING SPACE
An intergenerational dialogue of black women builders and developers of physical and digital space.
This discourse seeks to address the importance of brick and mortar spaces in areas of displacement while claiming digital realms to create new languages of expression and archiving revisionist narratives. Narrated and hosted by Gia M. Hamilton, a non-profit developer, scholar, curator and healer. With Panelists Carla Williams, Whitney Mitchell and Shanti Broom.
Join us here then carry over into the opening reception for Queens of New Orleans with YEP and DeOrin Payme's Enthroned photobooth in the Gallery. Enthroned is an ongoing photo series by DeOrin Payme that celebrates the beauty of black femininity and the city of New Orleans.
A native of New Orleans, Gia Hamilton received her Bachelor’s in cultural anthropology with a minor in visual art from NYU and her Master’s in applied anthropology from City University of New York. For 15 years, Hamilton worked with non-profit organizations as a Serial Entrepreneur, Program Development Consultant, Community Engagement Organizer and Curator. Gia spent 6 years working in the corporate sector as a researcher and organizational design consultant with Downey Associates International, supporting financial firms and non-profit organizations like Citigroup, Hearst-Argyle and TIAA-CREF in their restructuring process. In 2009, Hamilton founded Gris Gris Lab as a place based incubator and cultural exchange space to ensure that emerging thought-leaders could actualize their interdisciplinary projects through an innovative live-work model in Central City, New Orleans. Later, Gris Gris Lab built a team of social scientists who began cultural consulting to further support and strengthen the local economies of non-profits and small businesses in New Orleans, Seattle, Haiti, Washington D.C., Detroit and New York City. Gia joined the Joan Mitchell Center in 2011 as a consultant and was appointed Director in July 2013. In 2015 she founded the Afrofuture Society.
Carla Williams is a writer, editor, and photographer born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She received her MFA from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and her BA from Princeton University and is the author of numerous essays and articles about photography and co-author of two histories of photography, including The Black Female Body: A Photographic History with Deborah Willis. Her photographic work has been widely published and exhibited. Williams is editor of Exposure, the journal of the Society for Photographic Education. She currently resides in New Orleans and runsMaterial Life, a retail shop in town featuring decorative arts, books and other findings by black artists and designers, as well as select artists whose work highlights black subjects and culture.
Whitney Mitchell is a New Orleans based visual artist tenured in client relations and creative marketing campaign development. Whitney has combined her passion for photography, writing and abilities in forging strategic partnerships to craft her TwoMacks brand. Whitney's work lies in the fields of marketing, creative direction, freelance writing, and travel blogging. She is a visual marketing artist who creates brand connections through digital media for organizations craving community perspective.
Shanti V. Broom, native New-Orleanian and dynamic 16-year home-schooler has her head in music, Japanese graphic novels and creative expression through photo blogs, fashion and poetry. She is actively involved in the Young Artist Movement (YAM), a youth directed community-involved urban revitalization program that works to bring visual expression to the greater New Orleans area. She is also a member of Young Aspirations Young Artists (YAYA), a youth arts program that works to empower young people by teaching mixed media and entrepreneurship for marketing and selling their creations. Most recently, Shanti was accepted into the Youth Empowerment Project's YEP Design Works where she is receiving training and mentorship designed to prepare ambitious creative youth for real-world, independent arts-based careers.