A Black Futures Evening:
AIR Artists in Conversation

MOCA welcomes Southern Arizona Gender Euphoria (SAGE) House artists for a summer residency in Tucson. 

Black TGNC (Trans and Gender Nonconforming) artists are the changemakers who will lead us to a liberated future. Join us for a moderated panel discussion with SAGE House artists Tyrell Blacquemoss, Kobe Aaron Guilford, Grey Miller, zen mills, and moderator Zami Tinashe Hemingway. The panel will be followed by music and food by the Curry Pot food truck.

This program is free. COVID Safety note: All visitors and staff are required to wear masks at all times when on the museum premises, regardless of vaccination status.

 

About the Participants

Grey Miller (they/he) is in the process of remembering himself and visiting places where they’re from. They are a descendent of Black folks from Meridian, Mississippi, and Mexican-Americans from Eloy, Arizona. They are an undergraduate student and writer attending New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with an untitled concentration in film. They are a student in Cause Reign’s DREAM School. They have experience as a youth organizer with Chicago Freedom School and the Illinois Caucus of Adolescent Health. Their writing has been published in the InterAction Initiative Inc.’s zine “The Future Needs Our Stories” in 2020. They are a proud graduate of Evanston Township High School. 

zen mills (she/xe) is a blaQueer Trans Femme poet-cultural worker, born and raised on Tongva, Chumash, & Kizh Land (Los Angeles Area). As a cultural worker, she facilitates workshops on Altar-Making, Poetry, & Black Trans Feminism and has had poetry publications with Arcanum Magazine (2020 & 2021) and Radar Productions (2021). Xe is currently residing on Susquehannock Land as a Bucknell University Posse Scholar. Her scholarship focuses on Black Feminist Cultural Geography as storytelling and oral tradition. Her experiences are as a Cause Reign’s DREAM School’s  Black Indigenous Medicine Apprentice (BIMA), Black Emotional and Mental Health’s (BEAM) Youth Peer Support Co-Designer, Gender Justice-LA’s Outreach Coordinator, BreaktheBinary’s LGBTQIA2S+ Youth Mental Health Research Fellow, and Student-Researcher at SIT: Religious Pluralism: Christianity, Islam, and Indigenous Spirituality Program in Dakar, Senegal.

Born and raised in New Jersey (Munsee Lenape land), Kobe Aaron Guilford is a 24-year-old Black Audio Engineer, Composer, and Writer with a deep reverence for history and culture. They graduated from Ithaca College (Susquehannock/Haudenosaunee/Cayuga land) in May of 2021 with a BFA in Writing for Film, TV, and Emerging Media. Kobe Aaron has worked as an Audio Producer with clients such as A Little Juju Podcast, Black in the Garden, GESSO, International Center of Photography, and Pushkin Industries. Within DREAM School, Kobe Aaron is studying the mythopoetics of the Pharaoh archetype in the diaspora through community engagement, medicinal media, and Black Indigenous Quantum Archiving.

Raised in Kenosha, WI  Tyrell Blacquemoss (TBN)  is a prophetic dreamworker and descendant of a long line of African priests and Turtle Island medicine people.  As a scholarly researcher with a Bachelor’s of Fine Art with an emphasis in Africana Studies and Indigenous Studies from Cornell University, TBN reclaims and continues their family legacy of the science and art of dreaming. TBN has traveled globally studying with shaman, elders, and healers of the following traditions: African diasporic and Western Herbalism, Conjure, Hoodoo, Rootwork, Southern Folk Medicine, Pachakuti Mesa (Peruvian shamanism), Sonoran desert Curanderismo, Toltec – Chichimeca dreamplanting, and diasporic African and Japanese energy healing. They were a 2019-2020 fellow in Freedom School’s National Health and Healing Justice Fellowship. He has guest lectured in college classes, adapted dream practices for Waldorf education, and taught over 50 workshops nationally on dreaming with ancestors and landscapes. He performs using Medicinal Media and Ceremonial Theatre to speak to the malleability of time. He has developed a practice and theory of Black Indigenous Quantum Archiving as a method of retrieving information across time and space through dreams and natural materials such as metal and wood. He is the author of Equinox Dreaming Awake, Dreaming a Revision, and Growing Young Ndezi. He is the curator of Diasporic African Dream Anthology and is the award winner of the Thriving Communities Grant for Destroy the Black Nightmare, Birth the Dream, and a National Black Arts Forward’s Artist Project Fund Major Grant recipient.

Zami Tinashe Hyemingway, MSW, MAST, is the CEO and founder of Spiritus Wellness. Zami was born in Inglewood, CA at Queen of Angels hospital, and grew up predominantly throughout the inland empire.  Zami’s passion is to teach people how to liberate their wellness practice, through using a spirit, mind and body approach based in African diasporic practices and most importantly love. His mission is to give tools and resources for health and wellness, to communities of Color, Women and Femmes, Transgender and Non-Binary folks,  and others pushed furthest to the margins. Zami specializes in capacity building and technical assistance in the areas of Gender Affirming health and cultural responsiveness, with over 10 years’ experience in developing and implementing health behavior and health promotion programs. Zami provides the communities he works with, with an ecosystem of knowledge and practical tools to incorporate holistic wellness practices.  When not working you will find Zami going on hiking adventures with his dog Houston, working in his urban garden, and taking pictures of flowers. Zami also is a co-founder of Kindred Connections, in Tucson, Arizona, a non-profit collective that he is honored to help lead with two other amazing QTBIPOC community members, where they focus on healing via traditional food ways, art, and community celebration as forms of wellness and planting seeds for liberation, prosperity and thriving.