Museum of the African Diaspora and SF Pride present

QUEER. BLACK. HERE.

Join us for a virtual panel discussion with Queer Black visionaries who will discuss how they have worked to create space for community and preserve our histories. Panelists Sadie Barnette, Kin Folkz and Terrence Francois will discuss their efforts to enrich and strengthen existing communities, revive forgotten spaces and work towards Queer Black futures. Speakers will share the work that needs to be done to fight the gentrification, racism and economic disparities that pose a real threat to spaces for queer people of color in the Bay Area.

This program will be moderated by Kerby Lynch.

‍Register for this event on zoom in advance. You will receive an email confirmation with the link to the program.

Sadie Barnette’s artwork deals in collective and familial histories, in earthly acts of resistance and celebration, but is also tethered to the other-worldly, a galactic escape. Born and raised in Oakland, California, she earned her BFA from CalArts and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally and is in the permanent collections of museums such as LACMA, Studio Museum in Harlem (where she was also Artist-in-Residence), Brooklyn Museum and the Guggenheim.

Recent projects include the reclamation of a 500-page FBI surveillance amassed on her father during his time with the Black Panther Party and her interactive reimagining of his bar — San Francisco's first Black-owned gay bar.

Kin Folkz (they/them) is the Founder + Program Co-Director of The East Bay Queer Arts Center, The Oakland Pride Creative Arts + Film Fest, and Spectrum Queer Media (SQM) - an internationally recognized TQBLGIA+ rights and creative arts advocacy organization.

Kin is a published author, poet, and activist whose work has been lauded by the Huffington Post and presented nationally and globally including Japan, South Africa, and Jamaica. Informed by their Jamaican, African and Choctaw heritage, Kin prioritizes collective horizontal leadership, intuition, art as science, equitable practices, and somatic intelligence in the creation of collaborative social justice projects.

Terrence Francois (he/him) is an activist, event producer and emcee. He uses his leadership, events and local partnerships to connect people to talented transgender, non-binary and women artists at the forefront of sustainable fashion, streetwear, unapologetic gender expression, body positivity and diversity in media.

He's co-produced unforgettable events such as Cali Fantazies at the MoAD in San Francisco and Ascension at MetaDen in New York. He is the Founder of Wear Versatile, an event production agency which curates entertaining, empowering and brave events that center the culture of Black and people of color LGBTQIA/GNC community. Terrence is a proud trans-queer-Caribbean man who lives and works between the SF/Bay Area and New York.

See his work. wearversatile.com

Kerby Lynch is a current doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley. Her current dissertation explored the historical geography of Black displacement in San Franciso with an emphasis on Black queer community formations. In the future, Kerby seeks to continue archiving Black queer experiences across the diaspora.

DONATIONS OF ANY AMOUNT ARE ALWAYS WELCOME, SO IF YOU ARE ABLE TO, PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO MOAD ONLINE HERE, OR DONATING THROUGH GIVE BY CELL BY TEXTING THE WORD (USING ALL CAPS): MOADSF TO THE NUMBER: 56512 ON YOUR CELL PHONE, THEN FOLLOW THE LINK PROVIDED TO MAKE A DONATION. ALL DONATIONS WILL GO TOWARDS SUPPORTING MOAD AND CONTINUING TO BRING YOU ENGAGING PROGRAMMING.

Funding has been provided by California Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act economic stabilization plan of 2020.