Public Events

Please join us for an in-person reception celebrating the opening of DPAM’s Fall 2022 exhibitions: A Natural Turn: María Berrío, Joiri Minaya, Rosana Paulino, and Kelly Sinnapah Mary; Solo(s): Krista Franklin; and Demanding Change, Bearing Witness: Photographs from the Wilson Garling RiseUP! Collection. The reception will begin at 6pm with remarks at 6:30pm. Light refreshments will be served.

Join us for the screening of Rashayla Marie Brown’s newest film Reality Is Not Good Enough, a moving tribute to Black women who dream of being reality TV stars, no matter how exploited they might become. This comedy-drama experimental short remixes never-before-seen documentary footage of a failed WeTV pilot featuring the director's mother, a biracial adoptee from a Trumpmaniac family. The director's sisters and nieces humorously flip stereotypes and tragic devices of unscripted TV with surprising dexterity, citing Josephine Baker to Oprah Winfrey. Set to a masterful jazz score by Tomeka Reid, Reality is Not Good Enough shows Black women with power behind the camera as much as they are in front of it.

Following the screening, the artist will be in conversation with her mother, sisters, and nieces: Ann-Marie Hammond, Abrina Marie Matthews, Angell Marie Brown, Bailey Marie Brown, and Parker Marie Williams.

This program is planned in conjunction with A Natural Turn: María Berrío, Joiri Minaya, Rosana Paulino and Kelly Sinnapah Mary, curated by Ionit Behar, PhD. Sponsored by DePaul’s Center for Black Diaspora.

Image credit: Reality Is Not Good Enough, 2021. Film poster. Courtesy of the artist

adrienne maree brown and Krista Franklin share a love for Octavia E. Butler’s work. They recently collaborated on the The Octavia E. Butler Tarot Deck that is forthcoming with AK Press. Join them for a conversation about Butler, tarot, and more.

adrienne maree brown is a writer, activist and facilitator, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint); Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation; We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice; Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good; Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the co-host of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and Emergent Strategy podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.

Krista Franklin is a writer, performer, and visual artist, the author of Too Much Midnight (Haymarket Books, 2020), the artist book Under the Knife (Candor Arts, 2018), and the chapbook Study of Love & Black Body (Willow Books, 2012). She is a recipient of the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her visual art has been exhibited at DePaul Art Museum, Poetry Foundation, Konsthall C, Rootwork Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago Cultural Center, National Museum of Mexican Art, and the set of 20th Century Fox’s Empire. She is published in Poetry, Black Camera, The Offing, Vinyl, and a number of anthologies and artist books.

This program is planned in conjunction with the exhibition Solo(s): Krista Franklin and supported by DePaul’s Women's Center, Center for Black Diaspora, and Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.

Image credit:
adrienne maree brown. Photo: Anjali Pinto
Krista Franklin. Photo: zakkiyyah nabeejah dumas o'neal