TED Residency

Shani was awarded a place in the TED Residency program– an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. She is part of a cohort of amazing thinkers who are spending four months in the TED office, creatively taking on projects that are making significant changes in their communities, across many different fields. At the end of the session, she’ll have the opportunity to give a TED Talk about her ideas in the theater of the organization’s headquarters! To learn more, click here to visit her TED page.

Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter

Shani is one in a powerful group of over one hundred black women artists who gathered to form a collective force underground, known as Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter (BWA for BLM). Simone Leigh, the current artist in residence at the New Museum, convened this group in response to the continued inhumane institutionalized violence against black lives. BWA for BLM held a public event in solidarity with Black Lives Matter at the New Museum on September 1st.

This dynamic evening featured collectively organized healing workshops, performances, digital works, participatory exchanges, displays, and the distribution of materials throughout the New Museum Theater, Lobby, Fifth Floor, and Sky Room. The event was covered by media outlets including Hyperallergic and the New York Times.

BWA for BLM focuses on the interdependence of care and action, invisibility and visibility, self-defense and self-determination, and desire and possibility in order to highlight and disavow pervasive conditions of racism. For updates and information on BWA for BLM, please follow the group on Twitter (#BWAforBLM) and Instagram (@BWAforBLM).

Image Credit:
NYA (National Youth Administration) youth assisting in South Parkway Branch, Y.W.C.A. (Young Women’s Christian Association) in Chicago, n.d. Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, the New York Public Library).

Emory Douglas Exhibit

The Emory Douglas exhibit Shani curated, “We Have Nothing to Lose But Our Chains,” will be up until October 15th! If you are able to get to the beautiful Battery Park neighborhood in lower Manhattan, please stop by to visit the show, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party.