Youth-led Programming | Reflections on Firelei Báez

About the Event

“In most power relationships, you have the victim trying to solve the situation. I don’t want to create narratives of victimhood. I want to flip it.”—Firelei Baez

The immersive work of Firelei Báez places onlookers in the necessary discomfort of recognizing the disruptive mechanism of lineage erasure. Uncovering Lost Narratives is a multimedia workshop facilitated by Alycia Kamil, grounded in the uprooting work of Báez’s most recent exhibition, and her call to confront the violent practice of whitewashing within Diasporic cultures, histories, and bloodlines.

As we reckon with the lasting impacts of displacement and acknowledge our unconscious enabling of the suppression of these stories, this workshop emphasizes uncovering as an active practice. One that honors memory, serves as a tool for reclamation, and encourages collective healing. Through poetry, collage, and archival digging, participants reframe stories that have been maligned, fragmented, or stripped of their humanity. The evening will be spent reflecting on how identities are erased and how various creative methods can be a vehicle for remembrance and rewriting those narratives back in.

This space is designed for reimagining worlds where cultural suppression no longer has a system backing it. Beyond the art making, participants are called to reflect on the following question: How do we utilize our artistic practices to holistically document often dehumanized identities?

About the Speaker

Alycia Kamil Moaton is a 25-year-old multimedia artist, educator, and freedom fighter from the South Side of Chicago who uses creative expression to build movements and spark social change. Alycia has been doing on-the-ground community work for the past nine years emphasizing the importance of mutual aid efforts and accessible arts/radical education. She is the founder of Undoing Our Erasure, a platform that amplifies voices across the Black diaspora through various programming. Working across visual, literary, and performing arts, Alycia’s practice is rooted in collective care and Black liberation. She is the director of What’s My School Worth?, a documentary on the 2013 Chicago Public Schools closures, and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree at DePaul University in Anthropology and Black Diasporic Studies with a minor in Studio Art.