Wikimedia Commons Photo Drive + Black Lunch Table + Automata
Kearra Amaya Gopee
Artist-in-Residence
September 8 to 22, 2021
From November 6th-12th, Kearra Amaya Gopee + Black Lunch Table + Automata hosted a Wikimedia Commons photo drive, conceived as part of Kearra's residency at Automata during summer 2021.
From the Artist:
Remember when you went to that one event in 2018, sat at the front then took a photo of the person speaking so you could flex in your stories? Dig it back up and submit it, it’s eligible! Like to draw? Draw a Black artist you admire and submit it! BLT needs images as much as we need text.
Don't know how to upload to Wikimedia Commons? Drop into Kearra's zoom open hours during the contest's duration (3-4PM PST everyday through November 12) to talk with Kearra and get their help.
Black Lunch Table also offers a step by step guide on how to upload pictures and the rules HERE
KEARRA AMAYA GOPEE is an anti-disciplinary visual artist from Carapichaima, Kairi (the larger of the twin island nation known as Trinidad and Tobago), living and working on Tongva land (Los Angeles, CA). Their research based practice focuses on violence as it exists in/is enacted on the Anglophone Caribbean and its diasporas. They render this violence elastic and atemporal--leaving ample room for the consideration and manipulation of its history, immediacy and possible generative afterlives. Using lived experiences as a point of departure, they address violence’s impact on themes of (post)coloniality, affect, migration, intergenerational trauma, queerness, difference and healing. While complicating the viewer's understanding of economic and social marginalization in the region, their practice also desires to test the mettle of these same frameworks. Through their interventions, they aim to temper what we have known to be true with the potential of intuitive knowledges that have been historically cast aside in favour of Western assimilation.
They hold a BFA in Photography and Imaging from New York University and are an alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Currently, they are a MFA candidate at University of California, Los Angeles.
They are a regional proxy for Black Lunch Table and they obsess about residencies at asmall.place.
BLACK LUNCH TABLE
Black Lunch Table’s (BLT) primary aim is the production of discursive sites, wherein artists and local community members engage in dialogue on a variety of critical issues. BLT mobilizes a democratic rewriting of contemporary cultural history by animating discourse around and among the people living it. First staged in 2005 at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture artist residency, the project has grown by way of contributions from and collaborations with artists, digital humanities researchers, and Wikipedians. BLT currently includes two roundtable series’, an online oral history archive, and a Wikipedia initiative. Much like its creation of physical spaces that foster community and generate critical dialogue, BLT creates a digital space for art, Black studies and social justice issues.
AUTOMATA
504 Chung King Court
Los Angeles, CA 90012
info: automataarts@gmail.com
Flyer images: Nontsikelelo Mutiti by re:publica from Germany - re:publica Accra 18 – Day 1, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75616546 Derrick Adamas by Metropolitan Transportation Authority/Patrick Cashin, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88929882 Salome Asega by The Museum of Modern Art, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67383837 Frances Bodomo by WhatsThe411TV - Frances Bodomo Celebrates New York African Film Festival, 20 Years | What's The 411 | FILM, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106194001 Isaac Julien by Jere Keys from San Francisco, USA - Guin Turner; Isaac Julien at Queer Brunch, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3673517