Programs Red Notes An Interactive Writing Workshop with Shameekia Shantel Johnson

Details

  • Date:
    Oct 25, 2023
  • End Date:
    Oct 25, 2023
  • Time:
    7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
  • Location:

In-Person Program

Red Notes 
An Interactive Writing Workshop with Shameekia Shantel Johnson

The Africa Center at Aliko Dangote Hall
1280 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10029 United States (map)

Wednesday, October 25th, 2023 | 7:00PM – 8:00PM
Doors open at 6:30PM; workshop begins at 7:00PM
 
*Seats are limited. Registration is required.

Join us at The Africa Center on Wednesday, October 25th at 7PM, for Red Notes an interactive writing workshop that traces the significance of the color red in Black visual, sonic, and literary culture through select works. From Toni Morrison’s novels to Ming Smith’s images to Cécile McLorin Salvant’s songs and more, this program invites audience members to meditate upon the color’s psycho-spiritual relationship to Black being, and how it helps conceptualize social space. Through deep looking and listening, this workshop aims to inspire participants to embody the gesture of color through writing. To help engage with the physicality of the program, all participants are encouraged to bring a red item that represents a meaningful, personal recollection.

Shameekia Shantel Johnson designed Red Notes for The Africa Center’s writing workshop series. Through Red Notes she explores the poetics of language, sound, visual art, and design through writing.

 

 
Shameekia Shantel Johnson is a writer, curator, and researcher of Afro-Caribbean descent based in New York City. She received a BS in Art History and Museum Professions from The Fashion Institute of Technology. Johnson works from a critical framework of social architecture, in which she considers the multidimensional relationship between people, politics, narrative, and environment. Her curatorial contributions include black beyond: _assembly, alchemy, ascension (2022) at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Gallery of the New School; black beyond: _origins (2021) on New Art City; and The Complexity and Cost of Identity No. 1 (2021), staged at HOUSING. Johnson’s bylines include SEEN Journal, Forgotten Lands, Hyperallergic, Lucy Writers Platform, and Studio Museum Magazine. She has been featured in It’s Nice That and Cult Classic. Johnson is the creator of Poetry Room, a multidisciplinary platform where she explores the poetics of language, sound, visual art, movement, and design. Poetry Room programs may take shape as open mics and performances held in art institutions and alternative gathering spaces.