There Are Black People In The Future Artwork-in-Residence

Artist Alisha B. Wormsley launched her There Are Black People In The Future Artwork-In-Residence project in January 2019 in collaboration with Jon Rubin and Shiftworks. Through this residency, microgrants were awarded to eleven Pittsburgh-based artists and educators who explored the relevance and meaning of Wormsley’s text, “There Are Black People In The Future,” across multiple disciplines. The awardees creatively incorporated the text into work that spanned visual and literary arts, musical performance, and innovative pedagogy, and launched public programming that engaged community members in conversation about the text’s ongoing resonance.

There Are Black People In The Future Artwork-in-Residence is part of an ongoing body of work that Wormsley began developing in 2012. In March 2018, Wormsley’s text, “There Are Black People In The Future” was featured on Rubin’s The Last Billboard project, a 36-foot-long billboard on top of a building in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of East Liberty. Within a month, Wormsley’s text was removed without her consent by the building owner, who cited reports of developer complaints. The artwork’s removal and the subsequent outcry of strong community support for the work garnered attention in local and national media. Although she was later invited to reinstall the work, Wormsley chose not to.

In response to the outcry, this novel concept for an artwork-in-residence was developed. This residency placed Wormsley’s text “in residence” with eleven artists and educators living or working in five Pittsburgh neighborhoods – East Liberty, Bloomfield, Garfield, Homewood, and Larimer – closest to the billboard’s original location.

Selected through an open call for proposals, eleven awardees were given microgrants to implement project proposals that explored the relevance and resonance of the text across multiple disciplines over the course of the following ten months. The awardees received an honorarium and support from Wormsley and Rubin to implement their proposals. Shiftworks supported the residency, including project management and staff support.

• Thomas James Agnew, Navigating as a Black Creative in Pittsburgh
• Ether, The Afrofuture Has Arrived
• Anqwenique Kinsel, JUST SING! A Vocal Intensive with Anqwenique
• D.S. Kinsel, Totems, Shrines and Sacraments
• Amos Levy, There Are Black Teens in the Future: Afro Sci-Fi Storytelling at YMCA Lighthouse
• Lucas Mickens, blackMAN
• Onika Reigns, The Black Dream Escape
• Felicia Savage Friedman, I Am Beautiful! I Am Strong! Raja Yoga: Relevant and Radical Racial Conversations Swathed in Love
• Ayana Toukam, Journey of a Mystic (working title)
• Woodrow Winchester III, Art+Engineering: Towards the Humanistic Technologist
• Brett Wormsley, There Are Black People in the Future: Creative Expression Contest

Over the course of the residency, over 750 members of the public were engaged in programming and conversation with the artists and awardees about the meaning and resonance of the text and the issues surrounding its removal.

In June 2019, a daylong community event was held at Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s Alloy Studios titled “There Are Black People in the Future: A Conversation About Arts, Activism and the Future.” Wormsley was joined by Rasheedah Phillips of Black Quantum Futurism, director and writer Ellen Sebastian Chang, and artist and activist Jasiri X for workshops and a panel discussion about the residency. Workshop topics included Black Housing Futures and Human Rights and the Arts, with additional children’s workshops provided by Assemble.

In October 2019, a culminating community event was held at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh – Homewood, at which each of the awardees presented their residency projects. This event highlighted the many ways in which the awardees explored the text and engaged conversation around the issues surrounding the billboard’s removal.

This program was generously funded by The Heinz Endowments.

Learn more about the projects and participants of the There Are Black People In The Future Artwork-in Residence.

Wormsley collaborated with Project Row Houses and Goethe Pop Up Houston in August 2020 to launch a virtual Artwork-in-Residence in Houston. Learn more about the artists, teachers, activists, and community members engaging with the text in Houston, TX.

Wormsley was chosen as 2020 Transnational Fellow by Monument Lab. As part of her fellowship, she created a timeline for her There Are Black People In The Future body of work. Learn more about the story behind her artwork.

Alisha B. Wormsley is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Her work is about collective memory and the synchronicity of time, specifically through the stories of women of color. Wormsley’s work has been honored and supported with a number of awards and grants to support projects: The People Are The Light, afronaut(a) film and performance series, Homewood Artist Residency (recipient of the mayor’s public art award), the Children of NAN video art and archival project, There Are Black People in the Future body of work. Her national and international exhibitions include; the Mattress Factory Contemporary Museum, Art on the Bank in London, Octavia Butler conference at Spelman University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Studio XX in Montreal, Project Row House and the Houston Art League in Texas, Rush Art gallery in NY, and the Charles Wright museum in Detroit. In the last few years her work in public art installation has grown with her design of art in parks and There are Black People In The Future billboard, the afronaut(a) film series, new public work, Streaming Space, a 24 foot pyramid with video and sound installed in Pittsburgh’s downtown Market Square and AWxAW a multi media interactive installation and film commission at the Andy Warhol Museum. Wormsley has an MFA in Film and Video from Bard College and was recently awarded the Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University.

Jon Rubin is an interdisciplinary artist who creates interventions in public life that re-imagine individual, group, and institutional behavior. His projects include starting a radio station in an abandoned neighborhood that only plays the sound of an extinct bird, running a barter-based nomadic art school, operating a restaurant that produces a live video talk show with its customers, and co-directing another that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict. Rubin is an Associate Professor and Graduate Director in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.