CD Forum is proud to be supporting the work of Akoiya Harris through her show Prove It On Us, October 16th 7:30pm and October 17th 2pm. On October 18th at 3pm there will be a special post-event reception with food and a chance to meet the artist! 

"This project celebrates the legacy of Black Queer blues women such as Ma Rainey, Gladys Bentley, and Bessie Smith. It looks at how because of the work they did, we can dream up new futures as Black Queer femmes today." - Akoiya Harris

Bio:
I am based in Seattle’s historically Black Central District, a place my family has called home since migrating north in the 1960s. As a professional dancer, I have navigated as both a company and freelance artist. My work is a proud, loving, response to my environment as well as to my overlapping identities as a Black queer woman. Memory is malleable and history can often be erased unless documented by those who care for it. I create to ensure that we are remembered in the future. My art is for my future selves to know that we are dynamic people interwoven into the fabric of all things beautiful, not just a fluctuating percentage. I create so that I can join the lineage of Black artists, aunties, and makers that “carry it forward” through the body and voice. I collect oral histories as another way to document our lives.  Often these oral histories are reinscribed through my body and put in conversation with movement. I have found that when dance meets the stories I gather, the body unearths sensations and connections that wouldn’t have been activated otherwise. The legacies I engage with can be personal or public; regardless of the proximity, preserving these histories through art becomes an act of resistance to erasure.