Pamela Sneed: Speaking Tongue
Reception: 11/21/24 6–8PM
Pamela Sneed is a New York based poet, performer and visual artist. Her award winning 2020 book Funeral Diva (City Lights Books) received rave reviews and cemented her position as a major voice in poetry, it deals with her experiences during the AIDS Crisis while making correlations to COVID-19, and the ongoing layered impacts of racism, homophobia, and political brutality.
This, her third show of paintings and first collaboration with Dashwood Projects will open on November 15th and runs through December 21, 2024. There will also be a book of the same name due out in early December to accompany the show.
Artist’s Statement:
“Speaking Tongue, the show’s title is named after giraffes and their long black tongues and how they communicate but also is a reference to my own background as a poet, my experience as the granddaughter of a Baptist preacher and the idea of speaking in tongues when one is possessed by the spirit. I was moved by the animal spirits around me on the Mara and at Lake Nakuru. And as a tall person myself I was captivated by the massive height of giraffes, and their elegant gait. It’s imperative to mention that Nairobi, Kenya, this summer has been embroiled in protests, a younger population protesting against higher taxes and fees and government corruption. I hope to have captured my spellbinding journey in these images.
Driven by curiosity, art, poetry, inquiry and adventure I’ve traveled to places in West Africa, spent some time in Ghana and Benin and South Africa. These journeys have been life altering, have been educational and informed my identity as an African American Queer poet, visual artist, performer and also as someone who is part of a diaspora. I was curious about East Africa and decided to spend three weeks in Nairobi, Kenya and while there also treated myself to a safari at Maasai Mara, Kenya. My experience with animal life had really been limited to zoos and house pets so the experience of seeing wild animals in their natural habitat was educational, majestic, illuminating, inspiring and moving. I was overcome by their beauty, movement, dignity, and intelligence. As a way of documenting my experience and paying homage to these animals I painted them in watercolor and ink hoping to capture their essence.” PS
Pamela Sneed is the author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery, KONG and Other Works, Sweet Dreams and Funeral Diva published by City Lights in Oct 2020. Funeral Diva was featured in the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, Art Net and more. Funeral Diva won the 2021 Lambda Lesbian Poetry Award and recommended by The New York Times alongside Barack Obama’s memoir. Additionally, she has appeared on panels for The David Zwirner Gallery and has spoken at Bard Center for Humanities, The Ford Foundation, The Gordon Parks Foundation, Columbia University, The New School, New York Public Library, The Brooklyn Museum, MOMA, DIA, NYU’s Center for Humanities and The Whitney Museum. She has published in The Paris Review, Frieze Magazine, Art Forum, The Academy of American Poets, The Brooklyn Rail, 4 Columns, THEM, BOMB and most recently Poetry Magazine. She has appeared in Nikki Giovanni’s “The 100 Best African American Poems. Her visual work has appeared at Leslie Lohman Museum, The Ford Foundation, Kates-Ferris and at Lumber Room in Portland. In 2022, she had a solo show at Laurel Gitlen Gallery. She participated as a reader in the 2022 Whitney Biennial and was a narrator for Coco Fusco’s film, also in the 2022 Whitney Biennial . She has had keynotes at Yale University, Georgetown University, SAIC and Cornell. In March 2023, she premiered a solo performance A Tribute to Big Mama Thornton at Park Avenue Armory in 2022. She presented a production of A Tribute to Big Mama Thornton at Joe’s Pub in March 2024. She has won a Creative Capital Award in Literature in 2023 and a 2024 NYSCA grant for poetry. She teaches across disciplines in Columbia’s MFA in Visual Arts. She is Visiting faculty at The Whitney ISP and is a Teiger Mentor in the Arts at Cornell University Fall 2024.
Matchbox
2.25 × 1.375 in
$3
Pamela Sneed
Book
Published by
Dashwood Books
First edition
Softcover
60 pages
7.25 x 4.75 inches