CURRENT CONVERSATION
What if We Get It Right Virtual Reading Group with Zoraida Lopez-Diago
Curated by:
Dates:
CURRENT CONVERSATION
What if We Get It Right Virtual Reading Group with Zoraida Lopez-Diago
In conjunction with the current exhibition, Home/Land, featuring works by Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani, Baxter St is pleased to announce a virtual reading group led by curator and environmental activist Zoraida Lopez-Diago, centered on author Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures. This hopeful collection of essays, poetry, and art offers a roadmap for imagining vibrant, just, and sustainable futures, which we need now more than ever. Much like Home/Land, the book invites readers to reflect on the connections between culture, nature, identity, and justice and how we shape and are shaped by our environment, histories, and communities.
We’ll be reading What If We Get It Right? together over five weeks, with virtual conversations each Friday at 12 -12:30 PM, EST/9-9:30 PST, via Zoom. Here’s our schedule:
- Friday, December 13: Part 1: Possibility
- Friday, December 20: Parts 2-3: Replenish and Re-Green + If We Build It…
- Friday, December 27: Parts 4-5: Follow the Money + Culture Is the Context
- Friday, January 3: Parts 6-7: Changing the Rules + Community Foremost
- Friday, January 10: Part 8: Transformation + Final Thoughts
Baxter St has a limited number of free copies of the book available to participants. Stop by the gallery to pick up yours by December 12th between 12 PM and 6 PM, or purchase a copy at your local bookstore or online via Bookshop.org. RSVP here to join the virtual reading series and receive weekly Zoom invitations and reading reminders.
We hope you’ll join us and encourage you to visit the exhibition now through December 21.
Programming Highlights:
Join us on December 3rd at 5:30 PM at 126 Baxter St for a walk-through of the exhibition with curator Zoraida Lopez-Diago and artist Samantha Box.
Baxter St’s Guest Curatorial Program is Supported by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.
Zoraida Lopez-Diago is a photographer, curator, and environmental activist who is committed to centering the voices of people from the global majority. Zoraida has exhibited at institutions throughout the Americas and has lectured about her work at institutions including Harvard University, the Tate Modern, and La Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia), among others. In 2022, she co-curated “Picturing Black Girlhood,” an exhibition exploring Black girlhood that included more than 80 Black women, girls, and genderqueer artists working in photography and film. In 2023, Zoraida co-curated, “Picturing Black Girlhood: Black Utopia” an exhibition examined connections between Black girlhood, open space, and the natural world. In 2016, Zoraida co-founded Women Picturing Revolution and, through this project, co-edited Black Matrilineage, Photography and Representation: Another Way of Knowing, published by Leuven University Press (UK), and distributed by Cornell University Press.
Zoraida is an environmental activist and is the co-founder of Conservationists of Color, a national affinity group for people of color working to protect land and water; she currently serves as Vice President of Communications and Development at Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, one of the only food and agriculture nonprofits in the country working at a regional scale to transform our food system. Prior to this, Zoraida was the River Cities Director at Scenic Hudson, a NY-based environmental organization credited with launching the modern grassroots environmental movement.