Forthcoming Projects:
FLY | DROWN
September-October 2019
Curator/Collaborator
FLY | DROWN is a performance that uses mundanity as a tool for accessing pleasure for Black femme queer bodies. The performance utilizes somatic techniques that are particular to these bodies as they move between public and private spaces. These corporeal shifts make room for the performer to access pleasure, healing, and the multiplicity of identity, while also calling attention to the ways in which this body has to shrink and/or perform inside colonial, heteronormative, and patriarchal societies. FLY | DROWN is informed by the collective and personal experiences that exist between public spaces and private black domestic spaces. This performative oscillation, between the hyper-public and the intersubjective, exhibits the barriers and methods for accessing pleasure in a Black femme queer embodiment.
Location: Detroit Artist Market
Material Detroit
June-October 2019
Co-curator
Material Detroit is a performance and public art series that complements the Cranbrook Art Museum exhibition, Landlord Colors. Newly
commissioned works and performances throughout Detroit center around the themes of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and resistance.
All are free and open to the public.
Location: Various sites throughout the city of Detroit
Past Events/Projects:
The Black Art Incubator at RECESS
July 18 - August 12, 2016
The Black Art Incubator posits the idea of “residency” in the form of an IRL (in real life) incubator as an opportunity to continue to build and sustain public and community-driven practices around art and its existence in the wider world. The Black Art Incubator is organized and presented by Taylor Renee Aldridge, Jessica Bell Brown, Kimberly Drew, and Jessica Lynne.
Location: RECESS, Soho, New York
Empowerpoint Pop-Up Exhibition @ The Luminary
September 2 - 30, 2016
This fall, ARTS.BLACK is taking up residence at The Luminary in St. Louis, MO, where we will organize our first pop-up exhibition, Empowerpoint. The exhibition aims to reflect the way humor is used by contemporary artists as a form of social critique, with a specific focus on new media and digital art, video, and social media channels such as Snapchat, instagram, and Vine.
Location: St. Louis, MO
The Detroit Narrative Agency (Advisory Member)
January 2016-Current
The Detroit Narrative Agency aims to change the stories that form the future of this city. We are a group of Detroiters who understand that the DNA of of this city is made up of many stories, and who seek to shift the stories that are currently being told in and of Detroit towards justice.
After a year long process of developing the project, we are excited to begin cultivating moving image projects (film, video installation, emerging multimedia forms, etc) in and of Detroit. We will be selecting 8-15 projects to provide seed grants of $5,000 - $10,000, which artists and community members can use to shift the narratives of Detroit.
The Seed Grant application is now open! Apply here. The deadline to apply is June 24th.
Location: Detroit, MI
Indenpendent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive in Dakar
May 30 - June 5, 2016
The Curatorial Intensive, a weeklong professional development program, offers curators the opportunity to discuss, among colleagues, the concepts, logistics, and challenges of organizing exhibitions, public programs, and other curatorial models. It is designed to immerse a peer group of participants in a rigorous schedule of seminars and conversations, which support the process of developing an idea for an exhibition into a full proposal.
Location: Dakar, Senegal
Detroit Start-Up Week - Strengthening Arts Infrastructure in Detroit
May 24th @ 11:00am
This discussion invites leaders of the creative startupcommunity to discuss challenges, various strategies and current needs to strengthen and empower the talent in the arts in Detroit.
Location: Detroit Masonic Temple
Art Center South Florida, Visiting Artist
May 10 - May 17, 2016
Location: Miami, Florida
Ideas City Detroit, The New Museum
April 25-30, 2016
I will be participating as an Ideas City Fellow for the five day long immersive and collaborative studio laboratory in Detroit. Here, I'll be collaborating with a host of 'emerging cultural practitioners, duos and collectives working at the intersection of urbanism, art, design, community, and technology to create strategies designed for practical implementation.'
Location: Herman Kiefer Complex
April 23, 2016 1:15 – 2:45PM
Arts Administrators: Accessibility and Physicality in Public and Private Spaces
Moderated by Kilolo Luckett Panelists: Rujeko Hockley, Taylor Renee Aldridge, Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi, D.S. Kinsel
This panel will focus on access, resources, and privilege in the art world. A discussion about the ways in which black artists and arts administrators make use of public and private spaces to further conversations about equity. Some questions that will be explored: How are black artists responding to the particular concerns present in their respective geopolitical contexts? How does this manifest itself on a local level in the city in which you work/live? What do we mean when we say equity?
Location: Carnegie Museum of Art Lecture Hall
Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at 6:30 PM
Connecting Communities Through Critical Discourse
Transformer is proud to continue our ongoing FRAMEWORK Panel Series with FRAMEWORK Panel #23: Connecting Communities Through Critical Discourse. Examining the role of critical writing within the arts community through various models of coverage and criticism, panelists will include: James McAnanaly, Temporary Art Review (St. Louis, MO); Taylor Renee, Arts.Black (Detroit, MI); Cara Ober, BmoreArt (Baltimore, MD) and Kriston Capps (Washington, DC).
Location: NPR - 1111 North Capitol Street Northeast, Washington, DC 20002
Creative Many Michigan - Critical Connections Summit
January 29, 2016
This session will engage local, national and international presenters in three panel conversations focused on the relationships between artists and those representing, presenting, publishing, and collecting their work.
Liza Bielby - The Hinterlands | P. Scott Cunningham - O, Miami | Matthew Mazzotta | moderator: Taylor Renee Aldridge - Arts.Black
Location: Detroit, Michigan
X Contemporary Art Fair
December 2, 2015
ARTS.BLACK introduces The Black Arts Incubator
Using their collective research practices as a framework, the members of the BlackArtsIncubator discuss where race, gender, class and geopolitics inform the architecture of the art world in order to re-center these sectors. Featuring Kimberly Drew, Founder of Black Contemporary Art; Jessica Bell Brown, Art Historian; Moderated by Taylor Renee and Jessica Lynne, editors of ARTS.BLACK.
Location: Wynwood, Miami
Artprize 7 - Critical Discourse: Reflecting the Times: Art & Activism
October 2, 2015
Arthas always mirrored the times in which it is created. Sometimes artworks canbecome prophetic artifacts, an indication of what’s to come. This panel willprovide a space for dialogue with esteemed artists rooted in both art andactivism. Speakers will address important contemporary social justiceefforts such as #BlackLivesMatter, and how art is situated at the forefront ofthese movements.
Speakers include Taylor Aldridge, co-founder of ARTS.BLACK, Detroit; Jessica Lynne, co-founderof ARTS.BLACK, New York; Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, Engagement & Education Manager at Creative Time,New York; Dread Scott, artist, New York.
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan
Hand in Glove Conference 2015
September 18, 2016
Creating Discourse, Connecting Communities
Since the beginning of the recession, and in the shadow of art's spectacular market ascendency, artist-centric action has again taken root as a dominant mode of working. In this session, artists and organizers of alternative media platforms will talk about modes of creating discourse and connecting communities. Investigating current examples and imagining future possibilities, we will ask:What are the implications of creating our own platforms—our own media, critical discourse, and opportunities for connection—rather than waiting for outside agents to do so for us? As we circulate as individuals and as ideas, what are we building? How can we not just imagine alternate modes of connection, but embody them?
Moderator: James McAnally ; and participants: Joe Ahearn, Jessica Lynne, Taylor Renee, Susannah Schouweiler