BEST interests

I am working with a group of curators in Southeast Asia on a collection of exhibitions that address various Cold War Era histories within the region. I’m learning about how to make work remotely (during a pandemic), rethink presentation/performance within a digital context, and examine Blackness more expansively. Check below for a curatorial blurb about the first of the three scheduled exhibitions, In Our Best Interests:

In Our Best Interests brings together art works and archival material that reflect upon Afro-Southeast Asian affinities, such as Maphilindo, that came out of projects of equal rights, anti-colonialism, and regional collaboration during the Cold War. The exhibition reassesses these expanded histories of solidarities between and within Africa, Southeast Asia, and the African-American civil rights movement so as to speculate upon recent geopolitical shifts that have been thrown into relief by the global pandemic COVID19 and a failed "post-racial" contemporary.

And here’s what I’m thinking:

"In this current moment, we are all being asked to determine the nature of advocacy.  The suggestion that we each commit to protecting the rights of others, in spite of national, ethnic, gendered, and racial categories is a tremendous endeavor, but not, as I'm learning, without precedent.  For me, the exploration of these particular histories of solidarity and the collaborative process of identity creation is an opportunity to understand my American Blackness expansively, empathically, interactively.  Especially beyond the confines of language and culture into a realm of universal human experience. We all must eat, so who's cooking, serving, and cleaning the dishes?"

- Kenya (Robinson), LLC