Facilitated by Helen
[In-Person & Virtual]
This Black Futurist month, we’ll travel through time and space to arrive at Venus - the planet of Love and Beauty. What would the world look like if we truly loved ourselves and each other? How can we make love a popular movement? These are the questions we will explore together as we engage in collective ritual through a guided meditation and altar building. We will be guided to explore the infinite possibilities of self-love, as the well we pull from to nourish romantic love, community love, earth love, and interplanetary love. The space will draw elements from Afrodiasporic religion, astrology/astronomy, and the revolutionary writings of bell hooks, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin and Toni Cade Bambara among others.
Video art and guided meditation by Helen. Venus birth chart readings by Ke’Ron. This is a collective ceremony, we ask that you participate by wearing red and bringing an object to contribute to the altar that symbolizes love to you<333
workshop capacity: 20
Objectives:
Participants will engage in collective ritual and meditation to access divine love within themselves and each other
Participants will become immersed in the spiritual and political implications of Black love
Healing space and imagery to refuel us as a counter response to oversaturation of images of death and violence in the past few years
Participants will leave feeling less lonely and more hopeful
Components:
Love Altar: initially built by me & then participants will be asked to bring objects to contribute
Guided Meditation over an ambient mix (kinda like this but without original music)
Video Art Projections: experimental video art set to diasporic Black music & revolutionary audio bites
Love Letter Writing: to ourselves, friends, family, lovers etc *
Venus Birth Chart Readings by Ke’Ron *
DONATION-BASED OR SLIDING SCALE
donation-based
Zelle: 786.419.1111
Venmo: @orangemoooon
AMOUNT CHARGE
Whatever your heart desires
ARTIST BIO
Helen Peña is a Dominican-American daughter of the Atlantic, culture worker, filmmaker and community organizer from Miami, FL. She uses filmmaking, video art and storytelling as forms of healing and collective ritual. Her art focuses on women's relationship to the natural world, for subsistence and spiritual practice, weaving afro-diasporic religion with revolutionary theory, the spiritual and the material, reworking the myths and stories told to awaken solidarity within us.
In 2017, Helen co-founded (F)empower, a collective of queer feminist artist-activists, where she co-led a bail fund, a community garden, a queer Caribbean diasporic party, and more. For 2 years, Helen worked in Digital Communications for racial justice organization, the Dream Defenders. While there, she used art to amplify political organizing. In 2020, Helen participated in the UCLA Luskin Institute’s Sanctuary Spaces Residency, where she worked on her first short film, When Angels Speak of Love, a ritual portrait of a formerly incarcerated Black queer woman.
SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLE/WEBSITE LINKS
IG: @orange.mooon