Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
Fall 2023
Current Resident - Public Programming
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo is the Fall 2023 Current Resident, an innovative public art project that delivers black art right to people’s doorsteps. In the second week of November, their project reached over 24,000 people in the Central District neighborhood of Seattle, WA.
What will it take for us to fly free? takes the shape of an insert in the weekly “shared mailed package,” the bundle of coupons and ads that Seattleites receive every week.
Branfman-Verissimo explains that the project is “Rooted in two key questions: ‘What time is it on the clock of the world?’ which is part of Grace Lee Boggs’ book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, and a question that I have been asking within recent body of work, ‘“What will it take for us to fly free?’ which provides past-present-future language and spaces of connectivity for Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, non-binary, folks of color.”
These two questions are in dialogue with seven answers by seven Black writers, artists and activists, who expand and pull us into a weaving of ways that we imagine and center Black futures. (Documented in the work-in-progress photos above. Reference texts can be found below.) Branfman-Verissimo carefully selected these seven answers from their library and archive; lines from treasured books, poems, paper taped to their studio wall, studied texts and the words that they keep close to their heart.
Asking us to be question-askers and answerers to the many ways we are crafting Black lead past-present-future making. Inviting in a web of dialogue with all our people, with our ancestors, our stacks of books, our friends and neighbors and mentors. Knowing that we must hold space for the large web of curiosity, grief, collective work, joy, living, survival and flight!
Post your copy on Instagram by tagging @blackembodiments and #CurrentResident
Branfman-Verissimo’s Archive:
“We look close to move slow,” Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Viewfinder Manifesto
“This listening transforms our ability to tune in,” Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
“A love ethic makes this expansion possible,” bell hooks, “Love as Practice of Freedom” in Outlaw Culture
“We can require no less of ourselves,” Audre Lorde, “The uses of the erotic: the erotic as power” in Sister Outsider
“Revolutions are made out of love for people and for place,” Jimmy Boggs quoted in The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century
“A changed changer, i continue to continue,” Lucille Clifton, “I am not done yet” in Good Woman
“We lend our power to each other's spell,” Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir
Current ResidentAbout Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo is an artist, activist, educator, storyteller, cultural worker and person of multitudes. Through a practice based in the printed multiple, community-based work, performance and installation building, they invite the viewer to recall and share their own lived narratives, offering power and weight to the creation of a larger dialogue around the telling of Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, People of color’s stories. Lukaza has had solo shows at SEPTEMBER Gallery, Deli Gallery, Roll Up Projects, Printed Matter Inc. and Center for Book Arts. Their work has been included in exhibitions and performances at Konsthall C, EFA Project Space, San Francisco Arts Commision, Leslie Lohman Museum, YBCA, and L’Internationale Online, amongst others. Lukaza’s artist books and printed editions have been published by Endless Editions, Childish Books, Press Press and Printed Matter Inc. and are in the permanent collections at The Met Library, UCSC Library, NYU Special Collections and SFMOMA Library.
InfoAbout Current Resident
Current Resident commissions black artists to create a unique work of art that will be mailed to all residents of distinct Seattle zip codes. This public art project is inspired by the data collection and distribution processes of direct mail service providers that businesses (and politicians) use to solicit new customers—the "Current Resident" mailers are typically addressed to.
The Black Embodiments Studio purchases ad space in the same glossy, colorful direct mail packets that residents already receive frequently – sometimes even daily — with the goal of generating unexpected moments of encounter with black artists and their works. In the process we aim to push the practice of “public art” and the idea that “art should be accessible” to their limits. What if we simply sent free black art to as many people as possible?
Past Programs