A Conversation with Elena del Rivero, Alanah Odoms, Kara Tucina Olidge, & Andrea Andersson

Please join us for a conversation on the storied history of the 19th Amendment and universal suffrage in this country.

In this talk

Please join us for the eleventh installment in our Common Ground series, for a conversation with visual artist Elena del Rivero, civil rights leader and Director of the ACLU of Louisiana Alanah Odoms, and scholar and Director of the Amistad Research Center Kara Tucina Olidge in dialogue with Andrea Andersson, Director and Chief Curator of Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thoughtin New Orleans. They will be discussing the ongoing history of the 19th Amendment and universal suffrage in the wake of the recent presidential election and our contested Supreme Court.

Bringing together voices from the archive, visual art, and social activism, this hourlong conversation will kick off with a discussion of the nationwide art initiative Elena del Rivero: Home Address (Oct 2020–Feb 2021) to consider the local, national, and global implications of universal suffrage on the heels of one election and in anticipation of the Georgia Senate Runoff in January, as well as the virtual exhibition* Justice Can’t Wait: Oppression and Resistance - Slavery to Mass Incarceration in Louisiana* co-curated by the Amistad Research Center and the ACLU of Louisiana.

This conversation will be moderated by Malvika Jolly, and will close with a performance and recitation of “Register,” a poem and sound composition by Laura Mullen and Nathan Davis, developed in collaboration with the Voting Rights Archives at the Amistad Research Center.

Andrea Andersson

Andrea Andersson serves as Founding Director and Chief Curator of Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, a multi-platform organization based in New Orleans. As a writer and curator, she has organized internationally touring exhibitions; she coedits a series of artists’ books together with Siglio Press including Adam Pendleton: Becoming Imperceptible, Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen, and Hinge Pictures: Eight Women Artists Occupy the Third Dimension. She most recently coedited Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch (Yale UP) with Antonio Sergio Bessa, which accompanies the eponymous exhibition currently on view at the Bronx Museum of Art and traveling in the spring to the California African American Museum in Los Angeles.

Kara Tucina Olidge

Kara Tucina Olidge, Ph.D. is a scholar, arts and educational administrator and the Executive Director of the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University. She is the former Deputy Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a branch of the New York Public Library based in Harlem. Prior to joining the Schomburg in 2012, Olidge was the Director of the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a nonprofit organization serving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in Newark, New Jersey. Her scholarly work focuses on the intersection of art, critical cosmopolitanism and community activism.

Alanah Odoms

Alanah Odoms is a civil rights leader, mother, and a professional and spiritual support to countless activists across Louisiana and beyond. As the first Black woman to lead the ACLU of Louisiana in its 65 year history, she has answered the call to defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by challenging systemic racial and gender injustice – vestiges of slavery displayed most prominently in Louisiana’s epidemic of mass incarceration, immigrant detention and deportation, and racist policing across the state.

In the midst of a global pandemic that impacts Black people at disproportionate rates, and civil unrest against police brutality and systemic racism, ACLU of Louisiana aims to dismantle white supremacy in our laws and in the legal system- and move our state toward solidarity and collective liberation.

Elena del Rivero

Elena del Rivero (Valencia, 1949) is a multidisciplinary artist known for her works on paper and paintings as well as her sculptures, installations and performances. A great source of inspiration for del Rivero is everyday life and experiences and symbolic meaning, especially double entendres. She welcomes improvisation and spontaneity into her works and practice, allowing her projects to evolve and grow with time. Elena del Rivero has had solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries, including: An Archive of Dust, Naves Matadero, Madrid (2019); MOTHER, Travesía Cuatro, Guadalajara (2017); Chant, New Museum, New York (2011); Oeil d’âme, Galería Elvira González, Madrid (2009); Home Suite, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2008); [Swi:t]Home, Performance Drawings, The Drawing Center, New York (2001); Five Kept Letters…, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1998) and With Light, Galerie LeLong, New York (1993). Her works are in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Blanton Museum, Austin; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Baltimore Art Museum; Institut Valenciá d’Art Modern, Valencia; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; and others. The artist lives and works between Spain and New York.

Common Ground — PLmQDwVpMadcLGDOX9VN3sGTh2VYT4RJGY