Saturday 12/5, 1-2 pm via Instagram Live @forwhichitstands

 Join us this Saturday via Instagram Live for a walkthrough with artists Donna Bassin and Stephanie J. Woods of their works in Bound up Together: On the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment at Smack Mellon, followed by a conversation moderated by Eileen Jeng Lynch. Lynch is the Co-Curator of For Which it Stands, an evolving curatorial platform gathering contemporary artists who reinvent the iconic American flag, loaded with centuries of convoluted history and exclusion, to create new symbols of national identity and belonging.

Curated by Rachel Gugelberger and on view through December 13, the exhibition explores women’s ongoing struggles for human rights in a country with centuries of exclusion and oppression. Reconstructing the American flag, Bassin’s My Own Witness and Woods’ When the Hunted Become the Hunters incorporate first-hand testimonies of women of color in response to systemic racism. Bassin’s photographs recount the sitters’ individual stories of inequality and injustice, and Woods’s moving audio photograph reclaims the history and identity of Black American culture through the lens of a southern experience. For Which it Stands was launched by the Ford Foundation Gallery and presented by Assembly Room, this independent, activist-oriented initiative by curators Emily Alesandrini, Natasha Becker, and Eileen Jeng Lynch features talks, performances, and presentations of artworks in physical and online spaces.  

Schedule

• Opening remarks by Gabriel de Guzman, Curator and Exhibitions Director at Smack Mellon
• Introduction to the show by Rachel Gugelberger, Curator of Bound Up Together
• Walkthrough with artists Donna Bassin and Stephanie J. Woods (via IG Live)
• Conversation with artists moderated by Eileen Jeng Lynch, Co-Curator of For Which It Stands  

Artist Bios
Stephanie J. Woods is a multimedia artist from Charlotte, North Carolina who creates textiles, photography, video, and community engaged projects. Using symbolic imagery and materials, she references black american culture through the lens of the southern experience to examine the cognitive effects of forced cultural assimilation and how performance is ingrained in identity. Woods earned an MFA from UNC Greensboro and is the recipient of several residencies and fellowships, including Halcyon Arts Lab social impact fellowship, the Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, ACRE Residency, the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency, and Penland School of Craft. Additionally her work has been featured in publications such as Bomb Magazine, Art Papers, Burnaway, and the Boston Art Review. 
Donna Bassin is a photographer, filmmaker, author, and practicing psychoanalyst. For the series Here We Are, she invited women into her studio to collaborate on portraits of resistance, motivated in part by the writings of Emmanuel Lévinas, Judith Butler, and Teju Cole, who speak of face-to-face encounters such as portrait-making as an ethical act and social responsibility. The sitters – Shontel, Sufiyyah, Danielle, Dulce, and Tracy – use pose, gesture, gaze, props, and storytelling to represent individual experiences that insist on agency in the face of our crisis of democracy and constitutional law. Born in Brooklyn, Bassin lives and works in New Jersey.