In a creative writing workshop on the intersection of incarceration and HIV/AIDS activism, Kat Cheairs uses poems and essays as writing prompts—together with interviews produced by women of color in the early 1990s.

Limited capacity, please register via email: anmeldung@ngbk.de

This workshop invites participants to view the video “Voices at the Gate”, followed by a close reading of texts published by women at the intersection of incarceration and HIV/AIDS. We will reflect on what emerges from these readings, have an opportunity for silent writing and/or drawing time, and share our insights from our time together. 

“Voices at the Gate” is a video work commissioned initially by Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2021. Recorded minutes from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Upstate New York, Voices is a meditation on the intersection of HIV/AIDS activism, carcerality, landscapes, memory, being, belonging, and community care. Visitors are invited to witness, touch, and add to the natural materials on the altar excavated from sites near Berlin connected to histories of enclosure, containment, and incarceration. 

Katherine “Kat” Cheairs is an interdisciplinary artist, arts administrator, curator, educator, and researcher. Kat founded the Makeda School for Art, Media, and Humanities, an alternative educational and speculative learning space drawing from progressive education and Black feminist instructional pedagogies. Kat frequently collaborates on archival and video-based projects that intersect with AIDS, art, and activism.  Kat is pursuing a doctorate in art and art education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Their research focuses on Black women art educators’ pedagogy and practice through the lens of Black feminist onto-epistemology, Black studies, feminist pedagogy, queer theory, and affect studies. Kat serves on the board of Visual AIDS. Kat has presented on panels at the Tribeca Film Institute, Pratt Institute, The New School, NYU, Vassar College, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Poster House, BAM, The Aperture Foundation, Whitney Museum of American Art, and UnionDocs.