The Flux Factory Rhizome Project is a commitment to give intentional space to Black voices, and provide a platform for Black narratives by offering the support needed to help these narratives thrive and evolve.
The Rhizome Project is an evolving entity. As it grows, we will add programs focused on professional development and other forms of support. We commit to listening to the leadership of Black artists with an ongoing commitment both economically and through action. Many roots support the plant.
Flux Factory Statement of Commitment
Flux Factory is made up of artists of varying experiences, ancestries and identities, yet we acknowledge that over Flux Factory’s 29 years, the organization has been majority white. We aspire to be an arts community that centers BIPOC members through responsive listening and meeting people where they are, so we can learn and create knowledge together. We believe in relationships and building community.
If you would like to be involved with Flux Factory and Rhizome initiatives, and to find out about opportunities for Black artists, please email nat@fluxfactory.org with the subject line “Rhizome Project.”
Rhizome Programs
The Voice of Many, The Voice of One: Collective Actions for Resistance and Mutual Aid
Celebration of Black Life Cypher
Group Exhibition: For The Public
Curated by Dario Mohr of Ankhlave, For The Public was a February 2022 group exhibition that represented the physical manifestation of the artist’s desire to not just create, but to exhibit work that calls to be experienced by the public. As a pandemic struck the world, we all continued to exist, work and create. Artists of color have historically sustained a creative practice through tumultuous and uncertain times. The creative practice and resulting work serves as a method of self care and expression, as well as a source of inspiration for the audience. This exhibition represents the space for these artists to allow their ideas and works to emerge in the physical exhibition realm once again. For the Public is also represents the culminating exhibition of the 2021 AnkhLave Garden Project Fellowship.
Zine: Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See
Danielle and Kevin McCoy of Work/Play produced an online and printed publication to document the Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See group exhibition.
Group Exhibition: Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See
“Put your hands where my eyes can see” was a group exhibition about imaging held October 2021 at the Chocolate Factory Theater.
Participating Artists: Tyler Davis || Jen Everett || Kearra Amaya Gopee || Terrance James Jr. || Komikka Patton || Sasha Phyars-Burgess || Brianna Robinson || Ricky Weaver
Curated by Cameron A. Granger in collaboration with Makeba Rainey & Haiba Hamilton as part of the Rhizome Project.
The Queens Chronicle covered the exhibition.
About the Exhibition
Let’s think about the shared history of Black Folks in the same way poet Hanif Abdurraqib describes the Soul Train Line: A narrow, writhing, seemingly endless tunnel of Black Folks smiling and clapping. Where, in the center, partners are brought together – sometimes by intention, many times by fate. And together, using what knowledge they have of themselves and their bodies, they must make their way out – to the other side – urged on by the blooming claps around them.
These shared stories become less visible as we move through the present and into the future. Our histories are often confined to the margins (a tunnel of its own) and redacted to a distorted past tense. In their place, a violent vernacular has been built, creating an imaging that finds Black Folks – to quote sociologist and scholar Ruha Benjamin: “trapped between regimes of invisibility and hypervisibility”
The work on view considers both the capacity that images have to influence our collective memory & imagination, and how, through maintaining control of images in the mainstream, the powerful have effectively privatized that imagination; distorting entire histories, presents, and suppressing our possible futures in the process. The work included moves to, like Ms. Toni Morrison said, “carve away at the accretions of deceit, ignorance, and sheer malevolence” embedded in the images & language of the powerful, of The Empire, so that new ways of imaging, and thus new futures are “not only available, but inevitable”
A Divergent from the Magnetism of Whiteness: Dealing with the Hungry Ghost
Pop-Up Exhibition, April 29 – May 2, 2021
Curated by ARTSCHOOLSCAMMER & DaysOne
A conversation between black artists establishing self identity in the crux of the absolutisms associated with Blackness while defying the devices nature of the white gaze.
Participating Artists
ARTSCHOOLSCAMMER | Marq Bentley | Mikey Burns | INEZ THE Sun – Nija Inez | Kesiena Onosigho | Wokie Masaquoi | Ajani Russell
Rhizome Voice: Speakers Series for Black History Month
A three part speaker series for Black History Month, curated by Queens based artist and activist Trasonia Abbott.
Rhizome Voice brought together activists, artists and performers to share work, life experience and discuss the state of Black Liberation.
February 12, 2021
A Movement Not a Moment: Black Liberation Movements Through Time with Nathylin Flowers Adesegun and Fayola Fair.
February 19, 2021
The State of Black Art in and out of The Institution with Jonell Joshua and Felicia Holman.
February 26, 2021
Celebration of Black Life Cypher, night of rejoicing in Black resilience and artistry with Trasonia Abbott
Transforming America In Real Time! Building Community Through A Pandemic
December 5 – 20, 2020
Photographs from the Queensbridge Community and Beyond
Curated by Lashawn “Suga Ray” Marston, a Queens Native and lifelong Queensbridge representative.
Participating Photographers
Adrian L. Childress, Eric L. Cooper, HeroDiane Legerme, Tiffany Hines, Myles Minishotta (7yrs of age), Dannelly Rodriguez,
