Artist Talk: Natasha Florentino
Meet our new Artist as Instigator Natasha Florentino, a documentary filmmaker exposing the roots and consequences of housing injustice.
Future Chicago: Creative Roundtable
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National Museum of Mexican Art
1852 W 19th St
Chicago, IL
60608
- Free
- RSVP
Traveling outside our comfort zones, traversing the real and imagined boundaries embedded in our city’s racial history and design, is always greater in community.
Join National Public Housing Museum, South Side Community Art Center, Center for Native Futures, and National Museum of Mexican Art, for our Chicago kick off of Smithsonian’s Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past Initiative, as part of their National Conversation on Race series.
Following our two-day citywide excursion program (September 20–21), bring your observations, objects, and reflections to the National Museum of Mexican Art to debrief your experience with neighbors and colleagues from across the city.
Everyone is invited to bring an object that tells a story about their own community. Those who participate in an excursion are also invited to bring an object or story from the place they visited. Prompts and facilitators will be present at each table, supporting participants to share stories, observations, reflections, and lessons to take away and pass along.
This free event includes food, music by DJ Rae Chardonnay, live performances by Harold Green and Frank Waln, art-making, and other interactive activities, designed to foster greater understanding of our beloved city, and ourselves, those who are building its future.
Performers
Frank Waln
Among the many accomplishments of Frank Waln, a Sicangu-Lakota hip-hop artist, storyteller, and music producer from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, is a recent residency at ArtLab at Harvard University. Frank’s music speaks about the issues and injustices impacting the Native community and is created as a method for healing. He attended Columbia College Chicago on a Gates Millennium Scholarship where he received an undergraduate degree in Audio Arts and Acoustics. He has since received three Native American Music Awards. As a teacher (he is on the staff at Western Michigan University’s music department) he holds workshops on expression and self-empowerment. We look forward to hosting Frank at the museum in the future. Stay tuned. You can explore his music on all streaming platforms including bandcamp.
Harold Green
Harold Green is an ever-evolving artist whose vibrant storytelling and passionate, lyrical delivery captivate audiences domestically and internationally. Using poetry as his central art form, Green is a highly sought-after speaker, bandleader, and event producer. His self-published first collection of poetry (From Englewood, with Love, 2014) earned the prestigious Carl Sandburg Literary Award. Harold’s commercial publishing debut is BLACK ROSES and BLACK OAK, a duo of illustrated volumes inspired by his viral odes to Black celebrities who are making history today (HarperDesign, 2022), followed by a series a of successful his children’s books. Learn more about Harold Green on his website.
DJ Rae Chardonnay
Rae Chardonnay Taylor is a DJ, Arts Manager and events producer based in Chicago dedicated to encouraging a life of open-minded learning and expression. She began DJing in 2010 and has since held residencies at prominent venues in Chicago including the late Double Door, The Promontory and Soho House. She has circulated many private and public events to share her musical styling techniques opening for acts such as Janelle Monae, Jamila Woods, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Madison McFerrin, Megan Thee Stallion, OSHUN, Tiffany Gouche, CeCe Peniston, J Rocc, Just Blaze, Little Dragon, Big Freedia and many others. Learn more about Rae Chardonnay on her website.
Our Partners
This program is presented as part of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Conversation on Race, along with several other programs and events presented in collaboration with the National Museum of Mexican Art, Center for Native Futures, and South Side Community Art Center, September 20–28, 2024.
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