The Black Girlhood Altar: Healing Sanctuary

Free and open to the public

Marking the culmination of A Long Walk Home’s Art & Advocacy Residency, this event will activate the Black Girlhood Altar in the Weinberg/Newton Gallery courtyard, one of four sites for a temporary monument to missing and murdered Black girls. Traveling back from its previous sites in Chicago, the altar will exist in the gallery’s courtyard as a symbol of collective placemaking for the sacred lives of Black girls. Guests are invited to bring offerings for the altar.
 
Artists Scheherazade Tillet, Robert Narciso, and Leah Gipson invite the community to encounter different moments from each installation of the altar seen through the gallery windows, on the sidewalk and in the courtyard. The event will also feature healing practitioners, outdoor activities, music, and food. ALWH aims to create dialogue about real and permanent change through an inclusive youth leadership lens. This final installation in the gallery explores the ways in which art institutions and galleries within Chicago can be used as avenues to help aid social justice causes at grass root levels, promote anti-racism within American culture, and create greater visibility for Black girls.

Please note that this event will be outdoors in our courtyard, which has a loose gravel surface. The space is directly accessible via the sidewalk outside our gallery on Milwaukee Avenue.

Image: Offerings for Yemaya, Jada. Rainbow Beach, 2021. Courtesy of Scheherazade Tillet/A Long Walk Home