A Time For Action: Curated by Aisha Tida Abbassi

Blaffer Art Museum

An experimental inter-disciplinary micro-festival running for six nights at Blaffer Art Museum between May 23—June 5, 2021.

A Time for Action is necessary and now, confronting urgent political circumstances with an expansive performative language. This survey of performance across dance, theatre, music, spoken word, visual art, and trans-disciplinarity is organized by six intrepid guest curators: Aisha Tida Abbassi, Outspoken Bean, Rivkah French, Julia Barbosa Landois, Jake Sandridge, and Sixto Wagan.A Time for Action: Curated by Aisha Tida Abbassi on Friday, May 28 features Kaitlyn B. Jones, Dr. Sharbreon Plummer, Angelique Geehan, Kat Chaffin, and Luana Da Silva.

Visitor Information:This event is FREE and open to the public. Occupant capacity is limited, register to reserve your FREE tickets. Visitors are required to complete a <a href="https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=vboLF_CikEytSw6PDwxCWYdnonvwGO1PvF5eJZ9ewPNUQk9US0VVNDY3V1A3NzZFWFRJSlZFVFlBWS4u" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">COVID-19 Screening.</a>

Event Schedule:Journal Entry 390, Dr. Sharbreon Plummer / Media Gallery (2nd floor)Ongoing performance: 6:00pm - 7:00pmThis is not for you. Kaitlyn B. Jones / (2nd floor)Ongoing performance: 6:00pm - 7:00pmOne day, you will die. Kaitlyn B. Jones / Hamman Gallery (2nd floor)Ongoing performance: 6:00pm - 7:00pmAngelique Geehan, Luana Da Silva, and Kat Chaffin / CourtyardRound 1: 6:15pm - 6:45pmRound 2: 6:45pm - 7:10pmRound 3: 7:15pm - 8:00pm**The final round will be attended by the artists Dr. Sharbreon Plummer and Kaitlyn B. Jones. Guests are welcome to join a round of facilitation after it has already begun or may wait until the next one begins. Guests are also welcome to actively participate or listen in for multiple rounds if they wish.

About the CuratorAisha Tida Abbassi (aisha tida) is a cultural worker and TASAWAR Curatorial Fellow based between Houston and Tunis. She collaboratively employs alternative forms of education and creative intervention to engage children and young adults in the many places she calls home. Her work lies at the intersection of art, design, and civic action and is grounded in the themes of heritage and diaspora, art as social practice, and the making and breaking of patterns. In her artistic and curatorial work, Aisha explores the creative potential of togetherness when contemporary and community arts converge, co-creating with artists and initiatives whose aesthetic practice is a tool for community-building in search of justice. She seeks to discover what art, curation, and intersectional education can offer in the further development of individual awareness, collective identity, and a more equitable future.

About the PerformersKaitlyn B. Jones is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and activist based in Houston, Texas (The ancestral home of the Karankawa, Coahuiltecan, and Sana peoples). She believes that art is a conduit for healing, a seedbed for activism, and necessary fuel for the revolution against white supremacy. Her work aims to facilitate conversations about intersectionality, social justice, and the complex Black-American experience. In 2019, she graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance. Currently, she is a graduate student at the University of Houston, pursuing a Master of Arts in Arts Leadership with an emphasis in Museum and Gallery Management. You can find more of Kaitlyn's work at kaitbjones.com.Dr. Sharbreon Plummer is an artist, strategist, storyteller and educator with over a decade of experience in arts and community engagement roles. Her upbringing in southeast Louisiana informs her interest and investment in how culture and ancestral memory act as influencers of personal expression and contemporary work, specifically within the African Diaspora and Global South. She has created and facilitated work presented in/for institutions such as Project Row Houses, Rush Corridor Gallery, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Penn State University, Hampshire College and Americans for the Arts. Plummer received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy, specifically focusing on the intersections of art education and Black feminist praxis. She is the founder and lead alchemist at Aya Thought Studio.Angelique Geehan works to support and repair the connections people have to themselves and their families, communities, and cultural practices. She builds intergenerationally, with a commitment to transformative justice, to question and depolarize the beliefs and practices that can lead to isolation and feelings of powerlessness — and co-create or reclaim ways that can promote resilience and healing from historical and social harms. A queer asian gender-binary non-conforming parent, Angelique founded Interchange, a consulting group that offers anti-oppression support through materials and process assessments, staff training, and community building. She organizes as a part of Baby Carriers Provided, the Baby Carrier Industry Alliance, Houston Babywearing Resource, National Perinatal Association’s Health Equity Workgroup, the Health and Healing Justice Committee of the National Queer and Trans Asian and Pacific Islander Alliance, the Houston Community Accountability and Transformative Justice Collective, the Taking Care Study Group, QTPOC+ Family Circle, and Batalá Houston. Luana Da Silva (they/she) is an abolitionist healer and consultant. Their work centers on acknowledging, unpacking and healing from the impact of generational trauma and/or grief through a decolonial lens. Luana engages in this work in a variety of ways, such as therapeutic counseling with children, youth and families, full spectrum birthwork, organizational and community dialogue facilitation and consulting, as well as creative/cultural arts-based community engagements. Their passions live in the intersections of cultural trauma (-isms), perinatal and attachment trauma, developmental trauma as well as interpersonal violence and abuse and transformative justice practices. As a somatic practitioner, Luana utilizes “bottom-up” approaches to help invite embodiment and gradual shifts of physiological patterns that have become “stuck” in the body (individual and cultural), mind and spirit due to significant, disturbing experiences: dynamics of abuse, bereavement, oppression.Anti-oppression as a framework, compass, and critical reflection is what guides Luana in all aspects of their life’s work. Luana approaches this lifelong journey with humility and acceptance that there is always growth to be made and things to unpack and unlearn. Luana earned a B.A. in Sociology with minors in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Latin American Studies from the University of Houston in 2013. They then earned her Master’s in Social Work from the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston in 2015. Luana is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). Their greatest teachers have been and continue to be the many life lessons shared by elders, peers and their own experience in relationships to self and others, navigating and breaking deeply ingrained harmful culturally embodied colonial programming.Kat Chaffin (they/them) spends a lot of time around children: the three they birthed and the young folks at a nonprofit cooperative preschool in Salem, Oregon. Kat considers their role as being a guide and facilitator, working for the children, providing them with opportunities to experience the world while staying out of the way of their learning. Kat is "The Head Child" in a place where the kids are in charge. Kat also encourages parents to understand children’s perspectives, making space for as much of their full consent and agency as possible, even though (and especially because) they're small humans.Kat brings gifts from the preschool classroom to their work with adults as a trainer and facilitator, resulting in an approach that is playful, open, and curious. They aren't afraid of holding big or uncomfortable emotions. Kat works hard to apply the radical honesty they exchange with their young friends to as many areas of their life and work as possible.Kat is also an advocate for connection with the youngest people in our communities, working to train families and community health professionals in the use of baby carriers (known as "babywearing"). Working within the larger context of reproductive justice, Kat assists efforts to provide baby carriers and education to families and to reclaim cultural carrying practices that might have been lost because of colonialism and enslavement.

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A Time For Action: Curated by Aisha Tida Abbassi

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