ABOUT THE EVENT

This two-day program of community, song, conversation, and food is catalyzed by artist Ines Doujak’s decades-spanning practice. Doujak’s work stages interventions into socially prescribed boundaries. In HOPE AGAINST HOPE sculptures and costumes move from display to play, asserting presences on the street, honoring women land defenders, anti-capitalist environmental movements, and the intersections between struggles for liberation across class, race, and gender.

HOPE AGAINST HOPE extends beyond the individual artist’s practice and invites feminist poets, activists, musicians, and more to raise questions about how activist histories can inform radical presents. The weekend begins with a parade on May 4 at 2pm, co-presented by CARA and New York City AIDS Memorial. Weaving together pasts and futures of hope, participants form a chorus of voices calling for liberation from patriarchal oppression.

The parade opens at CARA with an invocation by poet Pamela Sneed, who will read work that honors the lives lost to AIDS through mourning and action. Her words will lead us into the streets, guided by the heart-beat of the parade: the percussion of Black-led, Afro Brazilian, all-women musical troupe Batalá New York. Joined by Brujas, a New York-based experimental union and skate collective, we will process towards St. Vincent’s Triangle (the New York City AIDS Memorial), which will act as a space for performances and gathering. At the memorial four artists from The Blacksmiths, a coalition of artists and organizers committed to using the arts to support direct action and civic engagement in the service of Black liberation and equity, will perform with vibraphone, trumpet, vocals, and percussion. Artist and writer Christen Clifford, whose work centers reproductive justice and organizing against gender-based violence, will perform. Free food will be available as an invitation for collective nourishment. The afternoon will be book-ended by a final offering from Sneed to close out the day.

Sunday, May 5 begins at 2pm and continues the spirit of the prior day’s parade, drawing in artists and educators for reflections on praxis, performance, and organizing. CARA’s Spring show artists Ines Doujak and Paloma Contreras Lomas will be in conversation with the exhibition’s curator and CARA’s Executive Director and Chief Curator Manuela Moscoso. This first public exchange between the artists, will delve into their intimate, political practices. Complementing the artistic dialogue, feminist academics and activists Nimmi Gowrinathan and Loretta Ross will speak about their work across institutions and human rights movements. Both Gowrinathan and Ross engage in scholarship that informs organizing around women’s political identities, reproductive justice, and structural violence. The day will also feature music and food. This weekend welcomes all who choose to join to explore the potential of bodies, together, in public space. As we move through the weekend we ask: How will you show up for your role as a member of the collective body? When we gather in grief and hope, what worlds are born.

For more information, please visit CARA.