Abolitionist Practices: Then + Now

Presented in conjunction with Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe, this panel explores the histories and legacies of abolitionist practices today. Just as Jackson’s work reckons with the overlooked portions of American history and the long shadow of slavery, so too do these area partners contend with abolitionist thought to correct the ongoing impact of slavery in contemporary society.

Organized in collaboration with the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and the office of Vice Provost for Institutional Inclusive Excellence, speakers include exhibiting artist Tomashi Jackson, Nia K. Evans and Cierra Michele Peters from the Boston Ujima Project, the Nation’s first democratically governed investment fund, Dayna Cunningham, Dean of Tisch College for Civic Life at Tufts University, and Laura McDonald, Manager of Collections, Tufts University Art Galleries.

Nia Evans is the Executive Director of the Boston Ujima Project. Her educational background is in the areas of labor relations, education leadership, and policy. Her advocacy includes a focus on eliminating barriers between analysts and people with lived experiences as well as increasing acknowledgment of the value of diverse types of expertise in policy. She is a co-creator, along with artist Tomashi Jackson, of Frames Debate Project, a multimedia policy debate project that explores the intersection between drug policy, mental health services, and incarceration in the state of Massachusetts.

Ms. Evans has a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and a Master of Arts in Education Leadership, with a course of study in Leadership, Policy, and Politics from Teachers College at Columbia University. She also studied abroad at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where she focused on International Labor Relations.

Cierra Michele Peters is the Director of Communications, Culture & Enfranchisement at the Boston Ujima Project. Peters employs a practice that includes video, installation, and durational performance. She works as an artist, curator, and organizer with projects that attempt to examine visual, spatial and sensory representations of blackness. Her conceptual work uses wry humor to present commentary on subjectivity and ontology against an urban backdrop. Her recent projects include Print Ain’t Dead, a pop-up bookstore and publishing platform and Demo Radio, an underground sound archive.

 Tomashi Jackson received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art in 2016, her Master of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in 2012, and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2010. Jackson’s work has been included in recent solo exhibitions at the MCA, Denver, ICA Philadelphia, Parrish Art Museum, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Jackson lives and works in Cambridge, MA, and New York City. 

Dayna Cunningham is the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean of Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. The only university-wide college of its kind, Tisch College develops new knowledge to understand the challenges of democracy and how to sustain it, trains the next generation of civic leaders, and co-creates research with communities to solve big and pressing problems. 

Abolitionist Practices: Then + Now is made possible by generous support from Tisch College of Civic Life, Steven and Amy Horowitz, and the Tufts AS&E Diversity Fund.

Image: Tomashi Jackson, Guns and Butter (Nia in The Morehouse Creed), 2022. Courtesy the Artist and Tilton Gallery.