iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Tariffs, Signal, the nominations, abandoning our allies, disappearing innocent people… none of this is incompetence, it’s on purpose. they are destroying this country on purpose. What is that purpose? Maybe we need to ask Russia. All of this only benefits them.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

We (Black Americans) warned you about fascism. This isn’t new to us. Colonialism and racism is just an appendage of fascism. You just didn’t listen because you believed it wouldn’t happen to you since you’re not Black. it’s exactly this belief that got us here. It’s time to decolonize your mind.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

So crazy. I fell asleep watching Sen. Cory Booker speaking at his 8th hour. I wake up to him speaking non-stop at his 15th hr. I checked my Apple News Top Stories feed and did not see one top story with his name on it. This is amazing. He’s still on fire. #corybooker

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Senator Cory Booker has been speaking for 8 hours right now and will keep going until he can no longer continue and I can barely find any media coverage of this. Pathetic. Thank you Sen. Booker! #corybooker www.youtube.com/live/v2utlMx...

youtube.com

Live: Speaking on Trump, Musk, and America’s Moral Moment on the Senate Floor | Senator Cory Booker

YouTube video by Senator Cory Booker

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Bernie & AOC right now in Tucson. There’s around 20,000 people here and they’re pumped up.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

RIP Nona Faustine. Thank you. ❤️

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Black women have been activists for as long as Black women have existed. Try valuing, trusting, and hearing us sometime. We have met the required 10k hrs + bonus hrs no one wanted to make us experts on the evils of white greed. But I guess you didn’t think they’d come for you. Leopards, faces, etc.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Thank you to The Print Center @theprintcenter for inviting me to share more about my series, Black Diamonds this Thursday!

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Feels good to get back in the studio today.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Barbarella is an artist. Her chocolates are sexy af!

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

I cut these guys out of my life back in Jan. Don’t shop at Target. Let them feel the weight of their decisions and become a lesson for other companies who cave to the orange it.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

It can’t keep it’s lies straight because: a.) dementia b.) it lies so much it can’t keep them straight anymore c.) it doesn’t give a shit aka narcissistic psychopath d.) all the above

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

As we head into tax season I have to really ponder the action of paying taxes that ultimately go into their pump and dump crypto scheme. This is not what our taxes are for and so we shouldn’t have to pay them. Right?

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Feb 28 – Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973) Creates radical Black geographies through abstract art—redefining what space, freedom, and movement mean for Black people. #BlackArtMatters

Working in painting, drawing, and sculpture, Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973 Chicago, IL; lives and works in Beacon, NY) combines expressive mark-making and geometric abstraction to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Dyson deconstructs, distills, and interrogates the built environment, exploring how individuals, particularly black and brown people, negotiate, negate, and transform systems and spatial order. Throughout her work and research, Dyson confronts issues of environmental liberation and envisions a path toward a more equitable future.

https://www.richardgraygallery.com/artists/torkwase-dyson

Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973)
Errantry, 2024
Steel and timber
172 × 340 × 120 inches (436.9 × 863.6 × 304.8 cm)

https://www.richardgraygallery.com/artists/torkwase-dyson

Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973)
The Clearing 2, 2024
Acrylic, graphite and ink on four canvases
Approximate overall install: 60 × 242 ¾ inches (152.4 × 616.6 cm)

https://www.richardgraygallery.com/artists/torkwase-dyson

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Can’t afford anything anyway. Don’t give them any of your money. They’re already thriving too much as it is. #economicboycott #resist

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Feb 27 – Ja’Tovia Gary (b. 1984) A filmmaker blending archival footage and experimental film to explore Black womanhood, rage, and survival. #BlackFilmHistory

Ja’Tovia Gary’s I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD

Ja’Tovia Gary uses documentary film and experimental video art to address representation, race, gender, sexuality, and violence.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

I’m going to close out the month future forward as we continue to make history. ❤️ Feb 26 – LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982) Photographs Black working-class life with the raw honesty museums don’t always want to see. #BlackPhotography

Latoya Ruby Frazier

https://latoyarubyfrazier.com/about/

LaToya Ruby Frazier
Huxtables, Mom and Me, 2008

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Hanging at The Projects_ and The Space_ from noon -4pm today and through Friday. Stop by and say hi!

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Feb 25 – Ann Petry (1908–1997) The first Black woman to sell over a million copies of a novel (The Street, 1946), Ann Petry’s work tackled racism, poverty, and gender oppression in a way still radical today. #BlackLiterature

The Street was one of the first to address the experiences of black women in terms of race, class and gender. Published in 1946, was also the first book by an African-American woman to sell over 1 million copies.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Feb 24 – Hazel Scott (1920–1981) A Black woman took on Hollywood and won. Pianist Hazel Scott refused to play for segregated audiences and was blacklisted for standing up to McCarthyism. #BlackHistoryMonth

Hazel Dorothy Scott
June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981

Jazz legend. Pianist. Performer. Activist. Trailblazer

At the age of eight, Hazel was a child prodigy who auditioned for the world-renowned Juilliard School of Music. Although the standard student had to be at least 16 years old, her performance of Rachmaninoff’s "Prelude in C-Sharp Minor" was enough for Professor Oscar Wagner to accept her into the school and take her under his tutelage. Scott was such an established force to be reckoned with by the time she starred in Hollywood movies that she was successfully able to challenge the studios' treatment of Black actors, demanding the same pay as her white colleagues and refusing to play subservient roles, which Black actors were constantly cast in.

https://www.hazelscott.com/about

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Thank you, Tucson Museum of Art, for adding this work to your collection and featuring it on the giant poster outside! Grateful to be part of a reimagined, inclusive vision of the American West. #TucsonMuseumofArt #AmericanWest #ArtInclusion #ContemporaryArt

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Feb 9 – Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890–1960) A sculptor who lived in poverty in Paris to perfect her craft. Her carved wooden busts of Black subjects were raw, emotional, and groundbreaking. #BlackSculpture

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
American artist born March 19, 1890 – Dec 13, 1960.

Prophet faced a lot of challenges throughout her life, especially when it came to funding her work. She applied for grants and support from various foundations, but more often than not, she was turned down. Getting her work exhibited wasn’t any easier—so much so that she sometimes used the name Eli Prophet just to get her pieces into shows.

Nancy Prophet, Negro Head, before 1927. RISD Museum, in copyright, noncommercial use permitted.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend An Inch. RISD Museum.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Feb 23 – Elaine Brown (b. 1943) Only woman to lead the Black Panther Party. Elaine Brown redefined revolutionary leadership and fought for Black feminist power. #BHM

From her About page because she’s amazing.
Elaine Brown is a former leader of the Black Panther Party, as Minister of Information then Chairman. She is the author of A Taste of Power and The Condemnation of Little B. A Taste of Power, her autobiography, is scheduled for film production with Alicia Keys slated to play Elaine, and, was recently published as an audiobook by Audible, and published in the UK by Penguin/Random House and in France by Éditions Syllepse (Paris).

As Executive Director of the Michael Lewis Legal Defense Committee, supporting the legal appeal of Lewis (“Little B”), who, arrested in 1997 in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 13 for a murder he did not commit, was convicted and sentenced as an adult to life in prison, Elaine sustained a campaign for his freedom for over 27 years. On September 27, 2023, Michael, at 40 years old, was released on parole to live in California.

· Elaine is CEO of the non-profit organization Oakland & the World Enterprises, Inc. (OAW), dedicated to launching and sustaining for-profit businesses for cooperative ownership by formerly incarcerated and other people facing extreme barriers to economic survival. OAW is now building 79, 100% affordable housing units in West Oakland, for projected occupancy in June 2024, the ground floor housing OAW-supported businesses, including a neighborhood market, restaurant, fitness center, urban farm and tech center

Elaine studied classical piano for many years, including at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, and has recorded two albums of original songs, one for Motown records—which recently re-issued a vinyl of her album, Until We’re Free. Elaine’s papers are archived at Emory University. Elaine is the mother of one daughter, Ericka, and resides in Oakland, California

https://elainebrown.org/

We were the women in the Black Panther Party, and we were sisters and we were strapped and we fought back just like any man… I’d say we were more progressive than [other Black organizations].
Elaine Brown, Huffington Post

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

I watch as Jasmine Crockett stands as one of the few boldly defending democracy, and I’m reminded—once again—of the relentless labor Black women put into saving a country that continually refuses to value them. She deserves #rest.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Feb 21 – Lorraine O’Grady (b. 1934 – 2024) Photographer, conceptual artist, critic. O’Grady stormed an all-white art gala in a dress covered in words like Jezebel and Mammy—a Black feminist mic drop. ❤️#ArtAsActivism

Lorraine O’Grady (Sept 21, 1934 – Dec 13, 2024) RIP to this courageous, talented, rebellious spirit. We were blessed to have your voice and wake us up to own our dreams and create space to make them our realities.

Rocking a dress made from 180 white gloves found in Manhattan thrift stores and carrying a white cat-o’-nine-tails made of sail rope and decorated with white chrysanthemums, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire (Miss Black Middle-Class) 1955 showed up ready to make a statement. She didn’t hold back, calling out both cautious Black artists and white institutions that refused to do better. Her first unannounced appearance? Just Above Midtown, the hub for Black avant-garde art. The next? The freshly opened New Museum of Contemporary Art.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Feb 20 – Alexis Pauline Gumbs (b. 1982) Futurist, poet, radical thinker, and one of my true inspirations. Alexis Gumbs teaches us to dream new worlds with Black feminist love. Read any essay or book of hers to be moved to build a better world. #BlackFeminism

Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
https://www.alexispauline.com

Book: Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Just received stacks and stacks of family photos. Looks like I’m the family archivist now! I’ll be going through these, scanning, and cataloging everything with names and dates. So excited to discover all the treasures. I love these old photos and thread to my ancestors.

My mom as a kid in Brooklyn in I’m guessing late 40’s - early 50’s. Alanna Airitam

My grandmother, aunt, and mom in Brooklyn. They all ended up with Alzheimer’s/ dementia. Alanna Airitam

Even though no one ever talked about it, I believe my grandfather had a pretty incredible eye for photography. There are so many amazing photos of his time in the Army. The back of this photo says “Soldier at leisure and fatigue sharp”. Alanna Airitam

No text on this one and I can’t identify the girls in this photo yet. But I love the smile of the girl on the left and the way the girl on the right has the clothesline between her teeth. A moment of play for these girls. I wonder what play was like for young Black girls back then. Alanna Airitam

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Reposted by Alanna Airitam

Hyperallergic @hyperallergic.com · 19/02/2025

Hundreds of artists rebuked the National Endowment for the Arts in an open letter after the agency imposed new requirements for grant applicants not to operate DEI programs or use federal funds to “promote gender ideology.”

hyperallergic.com

Hundreds of Artists Ask NEA to Stop Enforcing Trump’s Anti-DEI Mandates

A new open letter accuses the grantmaking agency of “conforming to Trump’s reactionary and discriminatory executive orders.”

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Because I’m in a mood. Here is How to Make a Country (2019).

How to Make a Country (2019) © Alanna Airitam

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

A great few days visiting with Hank Willis Thomas and Rujeko Hockley while they were in town for the LOVEROVERULES show at University of Arizona Museum of Art. ❤️

Hank Willis Thomas talking to audience in front of An All Colored Cast (2019)

Me checking out Hank Willis Thomas’ Farewell Uncle Tom 1971/2007.

Afro-American Express, Discover, and Mastercard (2004)

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Feb 19 – Pauli Murray (1910–1985) Nonbinary Black feminist, lawyer, and poet. Pauli Murray’s legal work inspired both Thurgood Marshall & RBG in fighting race and gender discrimination. #BlackFeminism

Pauli Murray was an American civil rights activist, advocate, legal scholar and theorist, author and – later in life – an Episcopal priest.

As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women's rights. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall called Murray's 1950 book States' Laws on Race and Color, the "bible" of the civil rights movement.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Feb 18 – Beverly Buchanan (1940–2015) Her sculptures of Southern shacks challenged racist, sexist art spaces. Buchanan used Black women’s folk art to resist. #BlackArtMatters

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Feb 17 – Faith Ringgold (b. 1930) When museums wouldn’t show her work, Faith Ringgold turned quilts into storytelling protests. Her Tar Beach series let Black girls dream of flying over the city—free. Rest in peace. ❤️ #BlackArtHistory

Faith Ringgold, Women on a Bridge,Tar Beach (1988)

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Feb 17 – Bettye Saar (b. 1926) Turned a racist Aunt Jemima figurine into a weapon of resistance. Her 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima redefined Black feminist art. ❤️ #BlackFeministArt

Betye Saar, Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972, assemblage

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Feb 15 – Florynce “Flo” Kennedy (1916–2000) Cowboy hat. No-nonsense attitude. One of the boldest Black feminists in history, Flo Kennedy sued Harvard Law to get in, co-founded NOW, and mentored radical feminists of the 1970s. She’s EVERYTHING! #BHM #IntersectionalFeminism

Florynce Kennedy in signature cowboy hat, smiling with excitement at camera. She’s wearing a dark sleeveless top, hands on hips on top of light colored lace up pants. She’s wearing a necklace of the female symbol around her neck.

Florynce Kennedy in cowboy hat speaking into microphone. Right hand raised with pen between fingers.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Feb 14 – Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) A sculptor and printmaker who used her art to fight for Black and Mexican liberation. Her radical woodcuts and sculptures celebrated Black womanhood in ways museums tried to ignore. #ArtAsResistance

Elizabeth Catlett in the studio sculpting a bust of a woman.

Sharecropper (1952) linoleum cut of a woman in a wide brimmed hat looks off to the right. Her face is tired and aged with lines and deep wrinkles with eyes dunked behind her furrowed brow. We can also sense she is older due to the white tightly curled hair peeking out under her woven hat. The brown skin of her neck emerging from a white shirt tucked beneath a dark jacket being held closed with a safety pin.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Feb 13 – Callie House (1861–1928) The first person to demand reparations for slavery. In the 1890s, Callie House organized 300,000+ Black people for pensions, arguing that former slaves should be compensated for their stolen labor. #BHM #ReparationsNow

Portrait of Callie House. She demanded payment for the labor of former enslaved people during a time when women couldn’t vote much less have any type of political voice, but she knew the importance of speaking up and demanding reparations despite the risks. Bravery, integrity, confidence, driven. We need more Callie House’s these days!

40 acres and a mule.

Callie House co-founded the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association. She crusaded for the U.S. Government to pay pensions for ex-slaves. This was a popular idea and gained a lot of supporters but also a lot of enemies who tried to stop her crusade.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Random atmospheric shots found on my phone. Needed to start the day with a palette cleanser.

Somewhere in Texas during a cross country road trip. Raindrops collected on the window with the landscape blurred in the background as we drove. I vaguely remember this right before a nap.

Double exposure in the Sonoran Desert. When walking through this desert, it’s hard not to see it as an ancient underwater world.

When it rains in the desert, we get rainbows. My partner thinks I moved here for him. I really moved here for the sky.

Landscape shot of mountain range with saguaro and bushes and tress in foreground against a cloudy and soft sky of pinks and orange colors and two rainbows peeking out of the bottom of the clouds.

A man on a beach somewhere along the GULF of MEXICO, arm stretched up high in the air to feed the birds flying overhead.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Congratulations to @waynemartinbelger.bsky.social for this stellar Smithsonian cover and 11 pages of beautiful photography of Canyon de Chelly and Mummy Cave. I even got a tiny photo credit. 😏 #smithsonianmagazine #mummycave

Smithsonian Magazine: In the Canyon of the Ancients. Cover photo of the Tower House in Mummy Cave with the Milky Way visible in the sky. Photo credit Wayne Martine Belger www.waynemartinbelger.com

Smithsonian Magazine: In the Canyon of the Ancients inside spread title page. Black and white photo of the Tower House with harsh shadows creating geometric lines on the wall from the wooden beams embedded into the face of the Tower House. Photo credit Wayne Martine Belger www.waynemartinbelger.com

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Feb 12 – Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915–1973) Before Elvis. Before Chuck Berry. A queer Black woman invented rock & roll. Sister Rosetta Tharpe shredded the electric guitar and changed music forever. Give her credit. #BlackWomenRock #BHM

Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing with guitar.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing with guitar. Go off dimples!!

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Happy Birthday to big brained super talent, Wayne Martin Belger. Photographer, camera maker, former mascot, nail tech, world class mountaineer, velodrome racer, Irish band heartthrob…May this be your best day ever. ❤️ Please stop by @waynemartinbelger.bsky.social and wish him a happy birthday!

Wayne Martin Belger on the upstairs patio of the Whitney Museum.

Want to see some incredible cameras? Check out his work at www.waynemartinbelger.com

Wayne Martin Belger as the second soloist in the Welding Ballet set to metal music hosted in his kitchen.

Wayne Martin Belger making some important calculations for Canyon de Chelly Milky Way shot that will be on the next cover of Smithsonian Magazine coming out next week!!

Check out the cover and spread for this Smithsonian Magazine and more of his work at www.waynemartinbelger.com

Wayne Martin Belger on a very green and humid walk in Richmond, VA.

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Alanna Airitam @alannaairitam.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Feb 11– Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) Wrote A Raisin in the Sun—the first play by a Black woman on Broadway. A radical Black feminist, socialist, and LGBTQ+ activist, she fought for liberation in her short but powerful life. #BHM