Dartmouth Events

The Alchemy of Art and Activism: A Public Conversation with Josefina Báez and Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Dartmouth Hall 105 & Zoom

Webinar Link: api.dartgo.org/alchemy-of-art-and-activism

Join renowned performance artist Josefina Báez and acclaimed writer, activist, and poet alexis Pauline Gumbs for a conversation on the alchemic creativity of art and activism. Students who have participated in Báez's threee-day workshop will also reflect on their experience.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Unlike most academic texts, Alexis’s work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.

Josefina Baez (Dominican Republic/USA) Celebrant. Creative expressions shared: Storyteller, ArteSana, performer, writer, theatre director, educator, devotee. Founder and director of Latinarte/Ay Ombe Theatre (April 1986). Alchemist of artistic/creative life process, Performance Autology© (creative process/live creating/creative life based on the autobiography of the doer in conscience; In life phases -youth, elderhood, illness and death). Joy, is the vital element present in her narrative, practice and teachings; Baez’s sublime “radical joy” for the road.

This event is part of the Teach-In: The Arts of Care event series, hosted by the 2024 Humanities Institute, "Promisuous Care and Performance".