Selected Curatorial & Produced Works

Exhibition Designer - in case of fire, speak (The Annenberg Center, March 2026)

in case of fire, speak is the companion exhibition for a world premiere collaborative performance by the Martha Graham Dance Company and PHILADANCO!. The exhibition is presented by Penn Live Arts and ArtPhilly, in partnership with The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, and will be on view at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, March 19 through July 6, 2026.

Curated by Ain Gordon and designed by Dr. Azsaneé Truss, the exhibition in case of fire, speak frames the making of the collaborative performance alongside rarely seen images from foundational modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham’s 1938 work, American Document, and its enduring question, “What is an American?”

Director & Curator - The Screening Scholarship Media Festival: Portals (March 2026)

Hosted by CAMRA (The Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts) and the Center for Experimental Ethnography (CEE) at the University of Pennsylvania presented the 2026 Screening Scholarship Media Festival (SSMF): Portals. This year’s festival explores and experiments with the idea of Portals: spiritual, virtual, historical, (meta)physical, and technological. Embodying the act of crossing boundaries, shifting perceptions, and navigating between worlds, portals act as gateways between what is and what might be. 

The 2026 festival consists of three parts: 

Curator & Artist - What World? (The Arts League, July 2025)

What World? sought to lay bare how artists (and society more broadly) are experiencing the very surreal global political and social moment we are in. It held space for the conflicting feelings of hope and the despair, optimism and pessimism, that living in today’s world inspires. Grounded in a practice of Black speculative futuring, What World? explored both the potential promises and threats we face in the days to come. Featured in Art Spiel.

Curator & Artist - The Conspiracy Mixtapes (University of Pennsylvania, April 2025)

The Conspiracy Mixtapes is an art exhibit exploring conspiracy theories in the Black public sphere as a type of everyday theory grounded in critical understandings of racialized oppression. Displayed in the Annenberg School for Communication Library, it complements my dissertation research on these themes. It will feature a series of more than 15 collages; magazines, records, books, posters, and other archival material; and a soundscape which sonically marries the themes explored therein. A limited-edition CD is currently in production, complete with liner notes which serve as an exhibition pamphlet.

Co-Curator - Present Futures: Experiments in Feminist Futurity (University of Pennsylvania, September 2024 - December 2024)

In recent years, popular mobilizations like #MeToo, the traveling protest chant ‘Un violador en tu camino,’ and the International Women’s March have contributed to a global feminist resurgence. These moments of heightened visibility inspire, uplift, and illuminate pressing concerns facing women and gender-diverse individuals around the world but often eclipse the ongoing work at the grassroots level amidst seemingly insurmountable odds. Present Futures: Experiments in Feminist Futurity aims to highlight the undercurrents of popular feminisms — the acts, rituals, and practices that sustain transnational feminist solidarities and networks of care. In addition to co-curating this exhibition, I also contributed two pieces: Transmitting Tresses and Technologies of Motherhood. Learn more here.

 

Selected Exhibition Contributions

Present Futures: Experiments in Feminist Futurity (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, September 2024)

An Otherwise Heaven (Da Vinci Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA, October 2024)

Screening Scholarship Media Festival 2024: ​Practices of Resurrection and Necromancy (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, April 2024)

The In-Between Spaces (West Gallery One at the Parkway Central Public Library, Philadelphia, PA, November 2023 - April 2024)

Philadelphia Black History: The People’s Stories (City Hall, Philadelphia, PA, February - March 2024)

Workshops Taught

Collage as an Intuitive Practice (The Arts League of Philadelphia)

A community-centered workshop series that invites participants to explore collage as a tool for reflection, connection, and creative expression. Through guided journaling, and the collaging of candles, tarot cards, and other objects, participants learned to approach art-making as an intuitive process. Moreover, this workshop encouraged participants to trust in their own instincts and imagination. Together, we experimented with materials, share insights, and create pieces that reflect both personal intention and collective energy. By the end of the workshop, participants developed a deeper relationship to their creative intuition and a small collection of original collaged works.

Collaging as Multimodal Praxis (University of Pennsylvania’s “The Art and Science of Story-Centered Research” Course)

This guest lecture and workshop provided an introduction to multimodal theory and an opportunity for students to engage in collaging as a multimodal method. It explored how collage provides a method for making sense of the sometime non-linear relationships between subjects, and a means of clearly representing these.

Magazines & Black Visual Culture (Boston College’s “Black Popular Culture” Course)

This guest lecture and workshop explored the history of Black magazines as a way to trace Black politics and cultural developments through self-representation. Following a brief lecture about Black visual culture, I led students through a collaging exercise. After the lecture, I collated student collages and printed a magazine for distribution throughout the Communications Department.

Collage as Worldmaking (The Arts League of Philadelphia)

Worldmaking is an exercise in creating new realities which can help us to dismantle oppressive systems as we employ radical imagination to work toward more liberatory futures. Collage is an accessible medium that allows us to assemble ideas and play in images in ways that can help us to envision new worlds. Throughout this course I introduced participants to a range of collage techniques and styles. In the process, I guided the students in thinking about issues they’re passionate about and imagining worlds where they do not exist. This workshop provided students with the opportunity to engage collaging as an intuitive practice and create at least one completed piece on canvas.