EVENTS

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab sponsors several events over the course of the academic year including the Solidarities Speaker Series and the Community Knowledge Lab Workshops. Subscribe below for updates.

June 4-5: The Diasporican Cultural Summit is designed to address the pressing need for gathering spaces that bring together diasporic cultural workers, fostering connections with the next generation of scholars, researchers, and artists. By creating a multidimensional learning environment, the DCS not only facilitates meaningful exchanges between cultural practitioners and emerging academics but also builds bridges to other organizations. This dynamic platform enables participants to share knowledge, develop strategies for collaboration, and strengthen networks, ensuring that cultural work remains vibrant, impactful, and deeply rooted in community engagement.

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Jan 16 @ 6:30-8pm: Join Remains // An Archive at the Baltimore Museum of Art for a conversation on Slavery in Motion, a multimedia art collection interpreting the life of Molia, an African woman and mother who was enslaved in Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica in the eighteenth-century. The conversation will feature the Remains team - Jessica Newby, Kevin Ah-Sen, and Samantha Stephens - as well as the artists Romaine McNeil, Tatiana Esh, Sha-Shonna Rogers, and Julia Mallory. Closing remarks will be provided by Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson.
March 13 @ 7-9pm EST: Opening Night of Diasporic Collage: Puerto Rico & the Survival of a People, on view at the CENTRO Gallery in El Barrio from March 13th, 2025 to September, 2025. This exhibition honors Puerto Rican identities in the archipelago and its diasporas. The Puerto Rican diaspora can be understood as a collage of overlapping histories of colonialism, resistance, and survival, and Diasporic Collage engages with collage as both practice and metaphor.
25 March - 28 April: AfroLatinx Lab’s exhibition Destierro opens at the LookOut Gallery at Michigan State University. Destierro explores Black femininity through the work of three artist: Patricia Encarnacion, Paula Damasceno, and Ayanna Legros. Each artist reclaims femme presence in bodily, spiritual, and land-based practices throughout the diaspora, while challenging Eurocentric beauty ideals. Destierro draws its tight from the scholarship of Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez who recasts the term — the condition of being torn from land — as a lens to read forms of dispossession alongside decolonial practice and build feminist solidarity.
April 15 @ 7:30-9:00pm EST: Destierro artist Ayanna Legros leads a workshop on bottle-making.
April 18 @ 5:30pm EST: Destierro artist talk featuring Patricia Encarnacion, Paula Damasceno, and Ayanna Legros. Moderated by Mary Pena and Aurelis Troncoso.
June 4-5: The Diasporican Cultural Summit is designed to address the pressing need for gathering spaces that bring together diasporic cultural workers, fostering connections with the next generation of scholars, researchers, and artists. By creating a multidimensional learning environment, the DCS not only facilitates meaningful exchanges between cultural practitioners and emerging academics but also builds bridges to other organizations. This dynamic platform enables participants to share knowledge, develop strategies for collaboration, and strengthen networks, ensuring that cultural work remains vibrant, impactful, and deeply rooted in community engagement.