Opening reception Sunday July 9, 3-5pm

Set on Freedom (SoF) was an artist retreat organized by the Open A.I.R. Artist Service Program at the Queens Museum for women, gender non-conforming, trans, queer artists of color in the summer of 2016. The program was held following violent tragedies like the mass shooting at Pulse and in the midst of several high-profile acts of police brutality that took the lives of Black people. Over the course of the year, a group of queer artists of color from the summit continued to hold space to discuss how the themes of displacement, dispossession, home, and strength have impacted their everyday experiences and informed their artistic practices.

One year following the inaugural SoF retreat, the works presented in this exhibition and accompanying program series, Set on Freedom, were created during the artists’ work to foster an inclusionary and mutually-supportive artistic community. Acting as self-disciplined cultural organizers during this process, the exhibiting artists have explored their own representations of race, gender, sexuality, and love, de-centering whiteness and imagining radical systems of progress to uplift themselves as queer artists of color.

Schedule of Events:

July 9, 3-5pm: Opening Reception featuring Artist Walk-Through and Poetry Reading

July 16: 2-4pm: Movement workshop and Pop-up Apothecary with BUFU

July 22, 3-5pm: Screenings & Performance

Special thanks to all the participants of Set on Freedom 2016 and its core organizers, Kay Ulanday Barrett, Dominique Hernandez, Silvia Juliana Mantilla Ortiz, Simone?! Satchell, and Thanushka Yakupitiyage.