In 2020-2021, K’acha Willaykuna is collaborating with U.S. artist Kandis Williams and Brazilian artist Aline Baiana in the commission of a Cassandra Press Reader on the topic of “Blackness, Indigeneity and Erasure”. Cassandra Press, founded by Kandis Williams, is an artist-run and educational platform to spread ideas, distribute new language, and propagate dialogue centering ethics, aesthetics, femme-driven activism, and Black scholarship. The K’acha Willaykuna commissioned Cassandra Press Reader is a unique opportunity to have two artists join together on transnational research that bridges timely issues of racial and social justice in the U.S. with Indigenous resistance movements in the Amazon. Through a creative, emergent process of encounter between these two artists, the resulting zine-style Reader will leave us with an enduring resource for our classrooms and beyond, as well as ongoing reflections on transnational artistic/political/social intersectionality. We consider this a transformative project in terms of K’acha Willaykuna’s engagement with expanded forms of artistic production and our commitment to collaborative action at the intersection of Indigenous arts and humanities.
See the below YouTube videos for more details about the Cassandra Press Reader on Blackness, Indigeneity and Erasure produced by Aline Baiana and Kandis Williams.
A conversation including the Reader during Our Distance Unlearning Hour from December 4, 2020
A conversation from Our Distance Unlearning Hour from April 23, 2021 upon its completion: