Shaping the Past
Wormsley’s project,
There Are Black People in the Future, is inspired by Afro-Futurist artists and writers who highlight the need for Black people to claim their place. Through the inscription and utterance of the words, "There Are Black People in the Future," the project addresses systematic oppression of Black communities through space and time by reassuring the presence of Black bodies.
In her Chicago iteration of
There Are Black People in the Future, and inspired by a new exhibition at the Elmhurst Art Museum (2021), Wormsley explores the future of Black housing in the US and its connection to mothers. The work will be installed at the McCormick House.
Wormsley runs a new arts residency project in Pittsburgh, PA, for Black Mothers called
Sibyl’s Shrine.
In collaboration with friend and artist Ayanah Moor, professor of printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Wormsley will create print material as a means of activism and education supporting the work of many mothers fighting for the future of Black housing.
This print work will be installed in the McCormick House at the Elmhurst Art Museum and shared with the public in distributable art kits that will instruct and inspire creating stamps and stencils as a means of activism to change in America.
For more information on obtaining art kits, please contact the Elmhurst Art Museum. (October 2020)
(c) Ayanah Moor
Ayanah Moor is a conceptual artist whose work explores blackness, gender, desire, and language. She works across various media to create paintings, prints, drawings, and performance. Ayanah Moor earned a BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and MFA at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. She is a tenured Associate Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
(c) Alisha Wormsley
Alisha B. Wormsley is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Her work is about collective memory and the synchronicity of time, specifically through the stories of women of color. Wormsley’s work has been honored and supported with a number of awards and grants to support program. Wormsley has an MFA in Film and Video from Bard College and was awarded the Postdoctoral Research fellowship in art at Carnegie Mellon University.
Shaping the Past is produced in partnership with the Goethe-Institut,
Monument Lab, and the
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education). The project connects to the activist and artistic work of local, national, and transnational movements as a reflection of memory culture and discusses new perspectives on forms of memory.
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