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Chronicling Resistance Project Launches Exhibition and Installations that Tell Stories of Resistance
PHILADELPHIA, September 22,2022— Eight Philadelphia activists, cultural organizers, and artists, are preparing to share nearly two years of research, archiving, collaboration, and creation conducted in The Free Library of Philadelphia’s ambitious project, Chronicling Resistance. The Activist-Curator Fellows have been working for the duration of the project to preserve and illuminate centuries of systematically excluded history while highlighting stories from current and historical movements resisting oppression and marginalization.
In August 2021, following a year of research in archives and special collections libraries, the Fellows began working with Consulting Curator Yolanda Wisher to develop their individual projects and plan exhibitions and public programs to share what they unearthed. Now, visitors can explore the hidden resistance history they uncovered at the Chronicling Resistance exhibitions at the Parkway Central Library and the South Philadelphia Library.
"Chronicling Resistance: The Exhibition invited eight of Philly's most dynamic and dedicated activists/artists to seek out their communities' stories of resistance in the archives. The search was difficult and didn't always yield what they were looking for. They wrestled with the gaps in the archives that have become all too common when it comes to communities of color. The resulting exhibition challenges those gaps as it attempts to fill them with oral histories, art, and questions. The exhibition also asserts that there is no single story of Philadelphia resistance," Wisher said.
Each of the fellows examined materials, conducted research, and sought new ways to tell stories about the following topics:
- Katherine Antarikso—Indonesian immigration to Philadelphia, within a history of US and European imperialism and colonialism dating back to the 1200s
- Lan Dinh—Southeast Asian immigration to Philadelphia after the Vietnam War, Southeast Asian youth resilience and Black-Asian solidarity in the face of institutional racism, criminalization, and oppression
- Charlyn Griffith-Oro—Autobiographical connections among food and migration between the Caribbean, Africa, Great Britain, and Philadelphia
- Germaine Ingram—The life of legendary Philadelphia tap dancer Louise Madison and the ways she and other Black women of the interwar era navigated and defied tight spaces of oppression, bias, and limited opportunities for Black women through careers on the popular stage.
- Wit López—Amplifying Black LGBTQ+ artists and writers in, from, or influenced by Philadelphia
- Malkia Okech—Abolition and abolitionists from the antebellum era to the present; the long history of what we know today as police forces; creating art as a means of resistance to oppressive policing
- Khaliah D. Pitts and Nia Minard—Celebrating and reinterpreting misrepresented Black food ways; celebrating Blackness and honoring ancestral traditions through food and cooking; bringing forward Philadelphia's hidden and unsung Black culinary geniuses
"Philadelphia is, and historically has been, a central hub for the cultivation of Black LGBTQ+ creativity in the United States. As a Black queer trans artist and cultural advocate, the Chronicling Resistance Fellowship gave me the space and resources to center the voices of Black LGBTQ+ creative elders and to archive the current experiences and contributions of some of my Black LGBTQ+ artist and writer contemporaries. The stipend from this fellowship also gave me the opportunity to inject financial resources into the lives of other Black LGBTQ+ artists in the city to ensure that the resistance part of this work isn't just lip service or a fleeting thought, but actual real, felt change in real time," López said.
Chronicling Resistance started in 2018 as a program of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) with support from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage (PCAH). With generous funding from the Mellon Foundation and additional funding from PCAH, Chronicling Resistance moved to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 2020. The initiative continues its aim to amplify stories of social, political, religious, scientific, and artistic resistance held in Philadelphia archives and help activists preserve their records of today’s acts of resistance to the status quo.
"Having led Chronicling Resistance since 2018, I've seen it transform from a project about what the archival field in Philadelphia could discover about itself and how archivists could amplify stories of resistance, to what activists and cultural organizers can uncover, reinterpret, and express when some of those institutional gates are unlocked,” Project Director Mariam Williams said. “It's almost surreal to have arrived at the exhibition. Unimaginable challenges–such as a global pandemic–made me doubtful we would get here. The public presentation of each Fellow's community's story is a victory."
The exhibitions open September 22 at the Parkway Central Library and September 29 at South Philadelphia Branch Library. See freelibrary.org for building hours.
Chronicling Resistance was made possible by a $600,000 grant from The Mellon Foundation and an Exhibitions and Public Programs grant from the Pew Center for Arts Heritage, both awarded to the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation.
09/22/2022
Department of External Affairs, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103-1189
(215) 567-7710, FAX (215) 567-7850