The Wild is a collaboration between myself and Marly Pierre Louis. It is series of pop-up bookstores and art experiences inspired by the tradition and history of black fugitives, maroons, refugees and exiles. The Wild is a meeting ground for Black togetherness that seeks to cultivate an intimate and liberated space for Black people through the curation of books and events.
The community experience centers readers interested in a deep engagement with books and the ideas within them, a space to sit with books and each other. The Wild seeks to be an otherwise space where art serves as a wayfinder to liberation. The books and art in this space are accounts, renditions, annotations, messages from/on this wild space and the characters both real and imagined who occupy it
Iteration # 1
Neverneverland, Amsterdam - October 10-12, 2020
Route to Liberation - Afrofuturism
A weekend series that included artwork by Leonel Piccardo, a curated dinner with African-American meals by Brennen Bucknor and a conversation about community liberation and care moderated by The Wild duo.
Iteration #2
W139, Amsterdam - October 22 - December 21, 2021 . A part of the exhibition - ‘That those things be not being’
Route to Liberation - Black Intimacy
Excerpt from exhibition text
The Wild contends that conversations that claim to bridge polarities often function as ways to silence Blackness, in service of the neatness, quiet and order of whiteness. The WILD exists outside of polarity and gestures of solidarity. We assert our right to opacity. This iteration of the Wild replicated the intimacy of an African auntie’s living room—an emblematic space of Black family, intimacy and community.
