Taking place within the exhibition, Carlos Martiel performs a new piece, No Resurrection, a visceral work developed with his mother that confronts the grief, powerlessness, and resilience of African American mothers whose children have been killed through police violence and systemic oppression. The performance charges the body as both archive and witness, inviting viewers to sit with pain, loss, and powerlessness, while recognizing survival as a radical act.

Pamela Sneed puts forward a poetic intervention, drawn from her extensive investigation into Fire Island’s history of slavery and her discovery of 17th-18th century slave pens on the Island. The readings engage and summon the presence and erasure of Black bodies to honor those who have been held there. Viewers are invited to reflect on their role as witnesses, and participants, in uncovering the histories that persist into the present.

Together, the artists reflect on embodiment, colonial violence, queer space, Black queer haunting, and resistance. Sacred and Profane asserts that public engagement is not passive: to gather, to watch, and to remember is to participate in the recovery of the body as evidence of what was taken—and what still remains.

Presented in partnership with Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.