AESTHETIC INHERITANCES
STACEY ALLEN, IN COLLABORATION WITH DANIELLE MASON AND KEDA SHARBER
Aesthetic Inheritances is a project by performance artist Stacey Allen, created in collaboration with cultural preservationist and photographer Danielle Mason, and filmmaker Keda Sharber, that explores the preservation of Black culture and community. The project is created, in part, on the site of the Barrett family home at Barrett Station, a Freedmen’s Settlement established in 1875 in Northeast Harris County.
Friday, June 16 9am through Monday June 19th 11:59pm
Aesthetic Inheritances: Online Screening
An embedded video will be available below for Juneteenth weekend.
Thursday, May 11, 2023, 7 PM
Aesthetic Inheritances: Screening & Conversation
Harris County Cultural Arts Council
A film screening will be followed by a conversation with Stacey Allen, Danielle Mason, and Keda Sharber, focusing on Black Material Culture, community building and self-determination.
Aesthetic Inheritances is presented by DiverseWorks as part of the 2022-23 Project Freeway Fellowship Program. The premiere film screening is presented in collaboration with HCCAC.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Stacey Allen works to create community through public displays of dance, movement, and art. Allen’s choreographic perspective is to create works that are culturally competent, incorporate social justice and activism, and embrace non-traditional theatergoers. Allen started dancing with Urban Souls and then went on to co-found Pretty Cultured, a three-person dance group. She is the current director of Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective. Her recent work includes Formed in My Grandmother’s Womb, part of Project Row Houses’ Round 50: Race, Health, and Motherhood (2019), A Single Thread Weaves a Future as part of Fresh Arts’ Space Taking Residency (2021), and The Fairytale Project at Discovery Green (2022). Allen also serves as the Director of Artistic Programming at Harris County Cultural Arts Council. www.staceyallencde.com
Danielle Mason is a cultural preservationist, educator, and scholar-practitioner engaged in the matrilineal transmission of womb wisdom, through writing, photography, ethnographic research, and curriculum development. Her practice explores the process of documenting continuities of Pan-African discourses as they appear in contemporary Black expressive traditions. Mason’s writing has appeared in exhibition publications such as the Retrospective Exhibition on Slavery. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University, Providence, RI; Griots of Cotton, Indigo, and Clay, Fiber Arts and Earth-Based Crafts Traveling Exhibition, Charleston, SC; and Gold Was Made Fa’ Her, Lawndale Art Center (2021), Houston. Mason is co-editor of When We Exhale, an anthology of Black women rooted in ancestral medicine, and is currently fulfilling a role as a teacher of Photography at Jack Yates HS in Houston. www.diasporicdaughter.com
Keda Sharber is a Houston-based storyteller who uses film, photo, and written/spoken word to investigate and reveal the beautifully complex truths of her community. Since 2009 she has produced a variety of content including documentaries, web series, short films, fine art photography and written pieces that all share the same goal of shattering stereotypes and rewriting the narrative of Black people. www.imagesbypapillon.com
SUPPORT
The Project Freeway Fellowship is supported by the Houston Endowment and was developed through guidance from EmcArts. Additional support provided by Nora & Bob Ackerley, The Brown Foundation, Inc., The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.