our skin, our hearts, our connection: an interactive program with the Future IDs Art & Justice Leadership Cohort

Join the Wende Museum and the Future IDs Art & Justice Leadership Cohort for our skin, our hearts, our connection: an interactive program with Dr. Luis Garcia, Lily Gonzalez, Dr. Martha Escobar, Kirn Kim, Phillip “Rock” Lester, Emiliano Lopez, Gregory Sale, Saúl Sarabia, Yolanda Wade and others. The Cohort cultivates justice-involved advocates and allies, exploring how socially engaged art practice can support and further the members’ effectiveness as leaders and as catalysts of social change.

our skin, our hearts, our connection features three ten minute long conversations between Cohort members and people who have been central to the growth and development of the members’ projects and programs. A throughline of deep care and love runs through each conversation. How do you connect in the face of insurmountable adversity? How do you overcome systemic, fault lines of poverty, inequities, and disenfranchisement? How do you move from antagonism to alliance? After each ten minute conversation, audience members will be invited to participate in a facilitated activity prompted by the conversations they just heard. The program will culminate with a dance party to provide an opportunity for connection and celebration.

About the Future IDs Art & Justice Leadership Cohort and the Future IDs Project: The Cohort is an ongoing program of the Future IDs Project that expresses the collective power of rescripting identity, artistic representation, and narrative during and after incarceration. The Cohort provides a platform that encourages and enables its members to generate collaborative and individually-led projects and advocacy programs as they strive to rethink structural power relations, address racial injustice, and engage in communal healing.

This program is led by Gregory Sale, Dr. Luis Garcia, and Emiliano Lopez and is a component of the Future IDs Project’s contribution to the exhibition Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West at the Wende Museum. The exhibition takes a global view of art made from imprisonment and spaces at the margins.