Drawn Together: Afrofuturism

In honor of Juneteenth, Drawn Together debuts with an exploration of Afrofuturism as a tool for powerful worldbuilding. As a cultural movement, Afrofuturism centers the histories, practices, and aesthetics of the African American diaspora in a reclamation of the past and a building of speculative futures that imagine Black liberation and a culture created through a Black lens. Tonight’s program brings together choreographer amara tabor-smith, filmmaker richie reseda, and neuropsychologist Tanisha Hill-Jarrett, who use Afrofuturism in their own work and, tonight, as a frame for envisioning societal transformation.

Prior to the 7 p.m. panel, from 6–6:45 p.m., join an intimate workshop led by Sarah Crowell, the Othering and Belonging Institute’s belonging and community builder. This workshop will use a movement-based experience to explore Afrofuturism as a lens for belonging.

About the Speakers

amara tabor-smith is a choreographer, performance maker, cultural worker, Conjure artist, and the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater, based in unceded Huichin Ohlone territory/Oakland, CA. Her interdisciplinary site-responsive and community-specific performance-making practice utilizes Yoruba Lukumí spiritual technologies to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. amara’s work is rooted in Black, queer, feminist principles that insist on liberation, joy, home-fullness, and well-being in the Afro NOW. She is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow and is currently a teaching artist-in-residence at Stanford University.

Tanisha Hill-Jarrett is a neuropsychologist, Afrofuturist, and assistant professor of neurology at the University of California San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center. She also holds a faculty appointment at the Global Brain Health Institute at the University of California San Francisco and is a Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health. Tanisha received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Florida and completed postdoctoral fellowships in neuropsychology and brain health equity at the University of Michigan and University of California San Francisco. Her program of research aims to identify and measure the social and structural determinants of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias among older Black adults. Tanisha developed Radical Imagination: A Dream Space for Black Women, a strengths-based creative aging and Afrofuturism program for Black women elders in the Bay Area.

richie reseda practices transformative justice in his relationships and daily life. He is a formerly incarcerated music and film producer, content creator, organizer, and creative director. While in prison, he started the worker-owned media collective Question Culture and co-founded Success Stories, the feminist-accountability program chronicled in the CNN documentary The Feminist on Cell Block Y.

Sarah Crowell (she/her) is a dancer/choreographer/arts educator who has taught dance, theater, mindfulness, and arts integration for over 35 years. For 30 years, she was a leader at Destiny Arts Center, a youth arts education organization whose mission is to inspire and ignite social change through the arts. She is a four-time finalist for a Tony Award for Excellence in Theater Education. Sarah now consults with arts and social justice organizations, including the Othering and Belonging Institute, Dance Mission Theater, and Next River, as a curator, speaker, performer, facilitator, and collaborator, adding movement to movements for justice.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance. Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.
 

Programming for Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is made possible with support from Google.org.