Living Gallery: Pamela Sneed

Living Gallery—a new series devoted to word-based performance, created and curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa and hosted by Gibney Gallery—presents acclaimed Black lesbian poet, performer and educator Pamela Sneed, author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery (Henry Holt, 1998) and Sweet Dreams (Belladonna, 2018). Her reading performance was one of the highlights of Danspace Project’s Platform 2016: Lost and Found.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Pamela Sneed is a New York-based poet, writer, and performer. She has been featured in the New York Times magazine, the New Yorker, Time Out, Bomb, Vibe, and on the cover of New York magazine. She also appeared in Artforum, Black Book, and the Huffington Post, and in Nikki Giovanni’s, The 100 Best African American Poems.

Sneed is a guest host and curator for Queer Art Film at the IFC in New York City. She is author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery, Kong & Other Works, two chapbooks Lincoln and Sweet Dreams, and the chaplet Gift. She has performed at Lincoln Center, Bryant Park, P.S. 122, Ex-Teresa in Mexico City, The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, the Green Room in Manchester, BAM Cafe, Joe’s Pub, the Public Theater in New York City, Central Park Summer Stage, Bronx Summer Stage, Columbia University’s Tribute to James Baldwin, the Whitney Museum, BRIC, Artist Space and as part of Adult Contemporary at Performa. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College as a guest faculty member and is an online Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago teaching the courses Human Rights and Art and Writing Art. She has also been a Visiting Artist consecutively in the SAIC summer low-res MFA program. In 2017, she was featured in Hyperallergic and OUT magazine. She was also a guest critic at Yale and Columbia Universities. Sneed both curated and performed poetry as part of the Brooklyn Museum’s Target First Saturdays. She performed at the Highline as part of Zoe Leonard’s event, I want a president. In 2016 she was a mentor/consultant for the Poet-Linc program at Lincoln Center and directed a final show at Lincoln Center Atrium. She was also a guest curator for a spoken word series in the Platforms Series at Dancespace on the impact of the AIDS crisis on art, and presented at a symposium at New York University on Humor and Politics. In summer 2016, Sneed received a residency at Denniston Hill. Sneed’s visual work was part of a group show Found: Queer Archaeology; Queer Abstraction at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in June 2017. In 2018, her visual work was showcased in a two-person show as part of HBO, “The Studio,” in Provincetown Massachusetts.

Photo by Lisa Guido

ACCESSIBILITY

The accessible entrance for this location is located at 280 Broadway. Please note that this is a shared entrance with the New York City Department of Buildings. To access the elevator, attendees may be asked to provide a valid photo ID and go through building security, including a metal detector.

Requests for reasonable accommodation or for access to the 280 Broadway entrance after 5:00 pm or on the weekend should be made three days in advance by contacting Elyse Desmond at 646.837.6809 (Voice only), or by e-mailing elyse@gibneydance.org.