Jovan C. Speller and Gabrielle E. W. Carter: Cultural Food Preservation, Climate Limitations, and Adaptation
Sat, Jan 28, 5 pm
American Swedish Institute
Part of the Climate Solutions Series
Moderated by Erin Sharkey
Join artists and agriculturists Gabrielle E. W. Carter and Jovan C. Speller as they examine what it looks like to transplant traditions rooted in the global south to cooler climates. Moderated by Erin Sharkey, with a special welcome from Minnesota Humanities Center’s Kevin Lindsey.
Artist statement: To be Black in the U.S. is to constantly shift and adjust, depending on the environment. Adapting cleverness to all climates is about the cultivation of abundance both literally and metaphorically. Since The Great Migration, Black gardeners, farmers, and homesteaders have adapted practices from Black southern cooking and cultivating traditions to accommodate moves to colder, northern states. What does it mean to adapt, and does adapting tradition for climate limitations still preserve and feed the culture? What are the nuances of tradition that don't include specific ingredients but rather the ethos?
About the panelists
Jovan C. Speller is a multidisciplinary artist, archivist, and radical homesteader based in rural Minnesota. Her artwork, which primarily evolves from her photography practice, interprets historic narratives through contemporary discourse. Her research-based practice is centered around elevating, complicating, and inventing stories that capture ancestry, engage legacy, and reimagine liberation. Her works are rooted in a practice of permacultural design through intentional observation and integration.
Speller holds a B.F.A. in Fine Art Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Her visual works and installations have been published and exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions. Her work has been collected in private collections, and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is a recipient of multiple grants and fellowships, including the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship. Speller was awarded the 2021 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize.
Gabrielle Eitienne is a cultural preservationist and multidisciplinary artist who uses Diasporic and local food as a vehicle to reimagine wealth, marginalized food systems, and inheritance. Her work uses oral history, cooking, textile, and agriculture to engage audiences and create contemporary source materials and points of access for those disconnected from ancestral land and tradition. Her project, The Seeds We Keep, is a short film commissioned by Oxford American that explores questions that ground her work and explore her rural imagination.
In 2018 she returned to her family’s homeplace in Eastern North Carolina, where she is archiving her own familial foodways. Her recipes and storytelling have been published and featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and The Smithsonian. She has done cooking demonstrations for the Culinary Institute of America, hosts suppers focused on land relationship and place, and can be seen in the Netflix series High on the Hog.
In 2020 she co-founded the North Carolina based Black Farmer CSA, Tall Grass Food Box, an equity-focused platform created to support and encourage the sustainability of Black farmers, by increasing their visibility and securing space for them in the local marketplace.
Erin Sharkey is a cultural producer, writer, arts and abolition organizer, and cultural worker based in Minneapolis, on Dakota land. She is the co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental production collective called Free Black Dirt and a steward of The Fields at Rootsprings, a retreat and respite place centering BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks in central MN. She edited, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, a forthcoming collection from Milkweed Editions (Feb 2023). Erin was recently awarded the Ashé Lab Fellowship from Penumbra Theatre, and the Black Seed Fellowship from Black Visions and the Headwaters Foundation. Currently, she teaches with Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.
Kevin Lindsey, Minnesota Humanities Center CEO and Founder of Lindsey Law and Consulting, has sought to find solutions, amplify voice, and expand economic opportunities for marginalized communities during his thirty-year career. As a current Commissioner of the St. Paul Public Housing Authority, Kevin has worked over the past 25 years to increase affordable housing supply and create opportunities for first time homeowners. During his eight years as Commissioner of Human Rights for the State of Minnesota, Lindsey oversaw state contractors increase labor participation for targeted racial and indigenous communities increase from 11% to 27%. Lindsey saw labor participation exceed 32% on the Minnesota’s largest construction projects during his tenure — U.S. Bank Stadium project, Minnesota State Capitol, and Minnesota Senate Office building. As a member of the Governor’s cabinet, Kevin also worked on a variety of initiatives to expand business development and economic opportunities and civic engagement for racial, ethnic, and indigenous communities. In private practice, Lindsey has worked with several clients in sports and entertainment and has served a year as the Chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association Sports and Entertainment section.
