Halfsister Berlin
Torgauer Straße 1
10829 Berlin, next to Südkreuz
06.02.2025
Artist’s Talk and Open Studio
by Claudia J Ford
19:00
WOKE WORK
collage in progress on gender, race, & environmental justice
In the abyss of our current global crises, we must always remember that we are not inextricably bound to these environmental and social dysfunctions; another world is possible writes Claudia J Ford.
As an artist and academic Claudia is moved by the awesome beauty of the natural world. Our planet is an incredible canvas for the development of our human species, as individuals and as the human collective. Simultaneously, she is motivated by the incredibly damaging force that humans have been in terms of environmental and social destruction, and our decimation of the Earth’s co-inhabitants – mineral, plant, and animal. In her opinion, that which humans have generated on Earth so far is not wholesome enough. We can and we must do better to care for each other and our planetary home.
“Woke Work” is named in reference to the reclamation of a term that comes from African American culture. To “be awake” and to “stay woke” is a well-established tradition of her culture. The foundation of Claudias project is to respond to the question: How do we reclaim the true meanings of the word woke in its established origins within Black liberation?
This collage project continues her themes of zoetic entanglement and its environmental, gender, race and social justice challenges. Zoetic means relating to life, vital, alive, or living. She has started a new project on gender and reproductive health justice that explores the simultaneous damage that patriarchy has wrought on the female body, female spirit, and the maternal Earth. This gender justice project begins with a declaration of the absolute right of autonomy for the female body and for conception and pregnancy including unfettered access to safe termination of pregnancy through abortion. This is also her attempt to reinvigorate discussion of the critical role that the gender non-binary plays in this struggle.
BIO
Dr. Claudia J. Ford is a professor of Environmental Studies at State University of New York, Potsdam, a Fellow of the Panel on Planetary Thinking at Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany, a Fulbright Scholar, a SUNY PRODiG Faculty, and a Research Professor at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Ford holds degrees in biology, medicine, business administration, fine arts, and a PhD in environmental studies. Claudia is sought after for public speaking and lectures, and she teaches and creates responsive mixed media and collage visual arts projects across the subjects of environmental humanities and literature, traditional ecological knowledge, spiritual ecology, entheogenic plant medicine, women’s reproductive health, and sustainable agriculture.