Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility

Zoraida Lopez-Diago is a photographer, curator, and activist committed to centering the voices and histories of people from the African Diaspora, with a particular focus on gender and intersectional environmental justice. Zoraida has lectured at institutions including Harvard University and the Tate Modern. In 2022, she co-curated Picturing Black Girlhood, an exhibition that included more than 80 Black women, girls, and genderqueer artists. In 2016, Zoraida co-founded Women Picturing Revolution and co-edited Black Matrilineage, Photography and Representation: Another Way of Knowing (Leuven University Press). Zoraida is the Vice President of Communications and Development at The Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming and co-founder of Conservationists of Color.

Working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for more than four decades, photographer Lola Flash’s work challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions. An active member of ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide. Flash has work in important collections such as MoMA, the Whitney, and The Museum of the African American of History and Culture. They are currently a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective, and on the Board of Queer Art.

A rising senior at DePaul University, Danielle Nolen studies early childhood education and developmental therapy. She has been a youth leader in A Long Walk Home (ALWH) since 2015. With ALWH, Danielle has traveled to New York, DC, and other major cities, to empower women and girls through her voice and art. In 2019, Danielle was selected as a Monument Lab Fellow, and featured in The New York Times as one of the youngest Black woman activists spearheading change in Chicago. Her photographs have been featured in exhibitions around the country including Picturing Black Girlhood at Columbia University (2016) and Express Newark (2022), Re-Imagining Safe Spaces at New York University (2019), and others. Danielle is now the program assistant for ALWH.

Writer, editor, and critic Jessica Holmes’s writing features regularly in BOMB, Hyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail, where she also edits the ArTonic column. Other bylines include Vanity Fair Spain, The Magazine Antiques, and The Woman’s Art Journal. Recent exhibition catalogue contributions include Judith Braun: My Pleasure (Opalka Gallery, Russell Sage College), Ellsworth Ausby: Somewhere in Space, Paintings from the 1960s and 1970s (Eric Firestone Gallery) and Markus Linnenbrink: THEREARESPACESTHATBREATHE (Museum of New Art, Portsmouth). Previously she served as Editor-in-Chief of the arts publication Degree Critical. For nearly two decades, she worked for the Calder Foundation, including 6 years as its Deputy Director.