In Collective Keeping:
July Happenings

As June folds into summer, we find ourselves reflecting on how gathering becomes a practice of possibility.

Pride Month closed with our second AfroPortals Community Archive Day centering Black queer folks and families across Oakland in partnership with Eastside Arts Alliance’s Community Archival Research Project and Bay Area Lesbian Archive. This archival effort was featured in the East Bay Express (and peep us on the cover!) Through blackwhole.art, we convened for the second of this year’s Black Feminist Salons honoring the expansive legacy of Senga Nengudi. Both spaces were enriched by the presence and reflections of beloved artists, curators, and scholars in our community whose work has shaped generations of Black cultural life.

As blackwhole.art continues building toward the 50th anniversary of the Combahee River Collective Statement in 2027, we’re excited to keep unfolding these offerings and opening new (and old) conversations around liberation, interdependence, and the worlds that artists help make possible. In the meantime, stay tuned for our July offerings below including our regular programs Revolutionary Rest and Men’s Wellness Fellowship as well as exciting additions to the AAFR family.

In Power,
Ashara, Christian, Ietef, Lyn, Marcella, Nakachi, Sam, and Zandashé

The AAFR team is newly joined by Lyn Patterson as our Manager of Memory & Refusal. Lyn brings her skill and expertise as an archivist and writer to advance Artist As First Responder’s archive design and development, public art activations, and intersectional creativity and housing initiatives.

Lyn Patterson is a storyteller and visual artist who lives in Oakland, CA. She is a deeply invigorated poet, specifically inspired to write about Black diaspora and those who have been systematically marginalized in society as a means of empowering future generations with their stories. For Patterson, storytelling is a sacred ancestral endeavor which can be used as a tool for paying homage and building future communities. Patterson often uses visual mediums to encapsulate her words and elevate the ways in which texts exist in conversation with one another. Her work has been published in Popshot Magazine, the Berkeley Poetry Review and has been featured on KQED. Welcome Lyn!