homegirl healin'

AN EXHIBITION OF BLACKWOMXNHEALING AT HOME, FROM EAST PALO ALTO TO DEEP EAST OAKLAND& BEYOND ....

*this exhibition is a virtual installation of blackwomxnhealing's irl homegirl healin' fest, a ten year anniversary celebration of our work. to learn more, click here

ART - JESSICA MONETTE | MUSIC - DESTINY MUHAMMAD

libations

A LETTER FROM OUR LEAD CURATOR, DR. REELAVIOLETTE BOTTS-WARD

we must always begin with libations.. and so i dedicate this exhibit to my grannie annie, who has shown up as calla lilies and spiders. who weaves a web of homeplace between my grandma mamie, my mother, my sister, and me, who weaves my mother closer to her sister, who helps us all as we learn how to heal at home inside the first homes we knew, each other.. & i dedicate this exhibit to my grandma mamie.. the motown mama who raised my motown mama, with deep roots in gullah geechee South Carolina.. & i dedicate this exhibit to my grandma ethel mae + bessie castille, her mother, to the Alabama born mamas with the fiery tongue who raised my father to know grounding.. & to the Coalition of these grandmothers who guide me as a collective of angels on my path.. | this exhibit reflects on “the roots and routes" of black geographies.. all the spaces and places our peoples have known.. our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers have known and made and shaped in search of freedom.. the movements and migrations.. all the women who taught us how to make homes of ourselves. and i must always begin with libations for my own.. for the mothers and grandmothers who made the mothers and grandmothers who raised me..

& i dedicate this exhibit to my mother, colette. who would crochet to pass the time. who turned water into wine in all the ways she needed, makin' magic out her capacity for alchemy.. my mother, the dream maker.. the butterfly spirit. her womb, the first home i ever knew. my mother, who braided burdens into hope with healing hands. to my mother, and

all the homegirls who held her, all the homegirls who taught her how to raise the home/girl she made me.. yeah, this one is for you.. this one’s for all of the ordinary women who raised me, and all the homegirls who are our kindreds. for our artsy aunties, our ghetto grannies, the god fearin’ fictive kin we claim, and all the hood folks we come from. for legacy, for lineage, for the in between, for the girlhoods that we get to reclaim and the womanhood that we get to remake, over and over and over again, granting the gift of home to ourselves.

mother..

you were the first home i ever knew

you will always be my favorite home..

asè .. asè .. asè

VISUAL ART

VIDEO ART

LITERARY ART

our featured artists..

the call..

the home.girl healin exhibit illuminates how Black womxn’s cultures of care expand possibilities for healing at home, even when our relationship to home might be fraught. this exhibit centers the somatic, spiritual, and ancestral rituals that Black womxn engage within intimate sites of care through communing with selves, spirits, sista friends, family, and fictive kin. it is a meditation on the relationship between ---

[ stillness and silence.. solitude and the sacred.. movement.. migration.. matrilineal healing.. space-making.. home-making.. homegirls.. hometowns.. and interiors.. ]

we invited artists to respond to the following inquiries through whatever art medium resonated most with them --

what homes raised you?.. what homes are you cultivating for yourself now?.. how do you find home in friendship.. sisterhood.. siblinghood.. community?.. why are these forms of home-making so essential for healing? this exhibit affirms that our home-making is a healing praxis. whether we've been unhoused or housing insecure.. whether we've slept indoors or outdoors.. whether we've lived in a tiny studio apartment or a room in someone else's home.. whether we're suffering from the ongoing impacts of gentrification and displacement.. we find ways to make space sacred, regardless of the spatial limitations.. we find ways to make home interiors, even when sleeping on concrete.

when we curate interiors of homes, we make more room to tend to the interiors of ourselves. when we cultivate community within our hometowns, we find connection and grounding. Black homemaking can provide an intimate site of reprieve that exists beyond the violence of the external world where racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and colorism cause embodied forms of layered trauma. & Black gathering can offer a site of collective recovery from these structural, institutional, and interpersonal violences. it is an affirmation of Black agency - that, despite the dis/ease of the structures we live within, Black folks cultivate third spaces, intimate spaces, and alternative elsewheres that offer deep care through curation and through community.

*homegirl healin' is curated as the accompanying exhibit for blackwomxnhealing's Sp '25 communiversity course, entitled Healing at Home: Black Geographies of Homeplace + Care + Recovery. to learn more, click here.

the chorus..

we put out a call to black womxn, and homegirls from all around the world responded! our 2025 homegirls healin’ exhibit features over one hundred works by Black womxn and girls, from the Milk Honey Bees collective in London, England to Ghetto Mantras from Detroit, Michigan to Jasmine Michelle in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and beyond! as you witness these works, we ask you to reflect for yourself, what does home and healin’ look and feel like for you? how might you curate more healin’ and home for yourself in your everyday life?