Join us for TANDA: Bridging Diasporic Divides: Synthesizing Family Through Visual Art by Natasha Moustache

Session Details
Date: 05/07
Time: 6:30-8:30pm CT / 7:30-9:30pm ET
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83766146223
Meeting ID: 837 6614 6223

Virtual online session
Sessions are open to the public
Closed captions available
Sessions are not posted online

Drawing from my experience as a first-generation person of African descent my arts practice centers around reassembling the fracturing I witnessed early on between the African and Black American communities. I use photography and domestic installation to synthesize family galleries as a way to connect experiences, rituals, and cultural signifiers that permeate the Diaspora. In researching this topic I’m thinking about cultural inheritance, colonial influence, shared generational traumas, and in particular creolization; how can we bridge the gaps between various African Diasporic groups in service of connecting us across oceans and manmade borders? How can we create new family archiving that narrows those cultural gaps between the African immigrant community and the Black American community and beyond? My work views the Diaspora through the lens of Eduard Glissant’s rhizome theory. I’m interested in ways to visualize the nuances of cultural experiences and signifiers – African and Caribbean artists and writers that work in similar ways. I find artist/writer interviews, film, and post-colonial theory particularly helpful to build language. I’m interested in the thoughts of other POC and BIPOC artists who identify as part of the African or Latinx diaspora.

Natasha Moustache is a photographic installation artist based in Chicago. Moustache’s practice utilizes portraiture and narrative documentation exhibited within intricately fabricated worlds that evoke themes of home, familial lineage, and cross-cultural commonalities centering the African Diaspora. Moustache received their BFA from Simmons College in 2004. In 2005 they were awarded the Center for Photography at Woodstock AIR residency at the age of 22. They continued their arts practice in Boston, Ma while foregrounding their photojournalist and freelance career in the subsequent years. In 2019, they enrolled in Chicago Columbia College to pursue their MFA where they were awarded the Stuart Abelson Travel Fellowship and later the 2021 MOCP Snider Prize Honorable Mention. Moustache’s work has been exhibited at the Houston Center for Photography, the International Center for Photography, the Center for Photography at Woodstock and the Hyde Park Art Center. Most recently, Moustache was a Latitude AIR in January 2023 and debuted their first solo show at the C33 Gallery in Chicago in April 2023. Their second solo show is currently on view at the Lubeznik Art Center in Michigan City, IN.

About the Tanda Program
Interweaving the formats of seminars, book clubs, research groups, and tandas, Tanda is a cohort program that aids individuals with their research and practice through self-directed and collective learning. It is a program providing time and space to gather, share, think and exchange conversations, resources, and knowledge on participants’ chosen topics. Tanda is a program by Chuquimarca.

About Chuquimarca
Chuquimarca is an art library participating in the making and exchanging of art knowledge and language by gathering art books and organizing cohort-led programs. It acquires art books. It supports research through the Tanda program. It supports art writers through the Muña Art Writing Residency. Chuquimarca is based in Chicago.

Visit Chuquimarca.com/tanda for more information

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