Tanda Spring 2025

How does feminist consciousness emerge within Zenana space? How can doula work be an anti-capitalist gesture? How is Black lineage created through film?

Join us this Tanda season to talk through these questions with a cohort ready to huddle!

Tanda stays asking questions, working out language, and thinking through shared screens—peep the full Tanda schedule below!

Details
Dates: Wednesdays, 03/26 – 04/30
Time: 6:30-8:30pm CT / 7:30-9:30pm ET
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84768581005

Schedule
03/26 – Zenana: Feminist Resistance in Confinement, Reevah Agarwaal
04/02 – Black Experimental Documentaries and Docufiction, Jordan Barrant
04/09 – Doula Work and Art: Decolonization and Community Care, Carina Vargas-Nuñez
04/16 – Craft as Resistance: Strategies for Keeping Craft Alive in Cultures Under Threat, Christina Sadovnikov
04/23 – Las Niñas De Memes y Social Media, Kaelyn Andrade
04/30 – Bulldagger: On Black Butch, Technology and Sound in the Midwest, Bri Robinson

Tanda Spring 2025 is facilitated by fern ramoutar

Virtual online session via Zoom
Closed captions available
Sessions are open to the public
Sessions are not posted online

Tanda Spring 2025 is financially supported by Tanda and Muña alumni, along with friends of Chuquimarca. ✨

Reach out to info@chuquimarca.com with any questions.

03/26

Zenana: Feminist Resistance in Confinement

Reevah Agarwaal

“Zenana” in Urdu refers to the secluded part of South Asian homes where women historically lived, barred from male entry. Both a space of confinement and communion, the Zenana embodies gendered demarcations of space and authority that persist today. I explore how feminist consciousness emerges in these domestic settings—often dismissed as frivolous—through gossip, humor, and tradition.

I examine the ways mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters navigate patriarchal households, resisting constraints while surviving within them. Growing up in a female-dominated yet patriarchal Indian home, I absorbed my mother’s and grandmother’s routines, crafts, and beliefs. Yet, patriarchal conditioning led me to devalue their work as non-intellectual and frivolous because it was confined to the domestic sphere. My interest in researching matrilineal inheritance and emotional dissonance stems from the belief that distilling physical and emotional materials lays the groundwork for liberatory feminist frameworks, which are often overlooked.

My art practice aims to explore the feminist nuances within these limitations. By reframing Zenana as a site of knowledge and resilience, I seek to honor the experiences of girlhood that shape our understanding of agency and power. What are some Zenanas that exist today and what are the lessons we can learn from them?

Reevah Agarwaal is an artist from New Delhi, India, currently based in Chicago. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2024. Drawing from the aesthetics of girlhood, her mixed media works utilize feminine palettes and decorative elements. By reinterpreting childhood photographs and keepsakes, she explores themes of adolescence and generational relationships in Indian families. Using repurposed textiles, she evokes narratives that reframe perceptions of domesticity, womanhood, and memory.

Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago Art Department, Woman Made Gallery, Research House for Asian Art, and more. In 2024, she was awarded the New Futures Award from The Other Art Fair and is currently a resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition.

04/02

Black Experimental Documentaries and Docufiction

Jordan Barrant

Black Experimental Documentaries and Docufiction explores a tradition of Black filmmakers, working in both feature and short films, who have woven experimentation into documentary filmmaking—a practice I argue is a continuation of Black individuals’ relationship to improvisation. Filmmakers such as John Akomfrah, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Ja’Tovia Gary, and Jazmin Jones unearth archives by melding their subject matter with their format, creating new forms of relation to the archive through experimentation and fictionalized elements.

I am particularly interested in the language of this lineage, how Black feminism has woven itself into several of these filmmakers’ practices, looking to Black feminist theorists like Sadiya Hartman who have created experimental archival based biographies. Further, I’m interested in how Black experimentation and docufiction have provided opportunities to navigate challenging archives. Additionally, I am curious about the theoretical frameworks these artists operate within and where shared connections exist.

As I work on creating an experimental docufiction film about Black lesbians in Chicago, I want to return to the lineage I am extending, understanding where I come from so I can better navigate where I am going.

Jordan Barrant is a Chicago-based writer, curator, and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the cosmological intersections of the ineffable, the South, and the Caribbean. Through oral histories and archival research, Jordan views the past as an invitation to imagine brighter, more loving futures. Working across film, fiber, and poetry, she is committed to process and guided by deep listening.

Jordan earned her Bachelor’s degree from Spelman College and a Master’s from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her writing has been published in the Burnaway, the Chicago Reader, the Boston Art Review and the Black Embodiments Studio: A Year in Black Art. She has participated in an Artpace Curatorial Residency, a fellowship with the Pulitzer Center and is a ICI Curatorial Intensive Alumni.

04/09

Doula Work and Art: Decolonization and Community Care

Carina Vargas-Nuñez

I am interested in exploring the intersections of doula work and art. I believe both can be a praxis for advocacy, creating community, and decolonization. I would like to explore this topic through a historical lens- investigating the history of doula work and its role in radical community building. Our current medical system is isolating, profit oriented, and does not center the best interest of the patient. I wonder how doula work and art can work against this. How can both of these practices work in conjunction to foster community? How does capitalism silence experiences of birth, death, and other major health events? How does capitalism shape artistic practice? I have been working as a doula for two years and often view my doula role and art practices as very separate- although my intentions going into both are very similar. I believe these questions are important because they give us insight into the significance of doula work, in building community, and in creating systems outside of what currently exists.

Carina Vargas-Nuñez is a multidisciplinary artist who employs paint and textiles to delve into the tapestry of identity, disability, and family history. From a young age, their artistic expression has helped process their experiences navigating disability which allowed them to envision worlds beyond the constraints of complex health challenges. This world building has continued into their practice today, where they use bright colors and defined lines to illustrate narratives aimed to better understand a sense of self. Through elements of symbolism and magic realism, they use images crafted from their Cuban family’s migration stories, their journey with queerness, and their personal history with cultural mythology and spirituality.

04/16

Craft as Resistance: Strategies for Keeping Craft Alive in Cultures Under Threat

Christina Sadovnikov

In the wake of the Russian invasion of 2020, I saw my family and thousands of others flee Ukraine as the country started to turn to dust. This event led me to explore how a culture survives when its physical markers are gone. I began researching Ukrainian craft history, tracing its roots back to the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture (5500-2750 BCE). As I saw the lineage of these ancient symbols to present-day Ukrainian craft traditions I discovered that traditional craft symbols, integral to Ukraine’s geocultural identity, serve as a living language sustaining cultural continuity. Many global craft traditions are endangered, especially in conflict zones and small communities where skilled practitioners are diminishing. How do we keep craft traditions alive when the cultures they are connected to are under attack? In what ways can craft serve as a tool of resistance?

Christina Sadovnikov is an artist/teacher/community organizer living on the land of the Council of Three Fires (Chicago, IL). Her art practice integrates material agency, earth systems science, low-technology, craft practices, and collective memory. These interests coalesce into site-specific installations, exhibitions held outside of institutions, and a teaching practice that centers building somatic and material relationships. Christina graduated with a BFA in Craft and Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has been a resident at Mass MoCA for the Assets for Artists Residency Program and at the Gullkistan Center for Creativity in Iceland. Her work has been shown at Flux Factory (NY), The Plan (IL), the James River Park System (VA), Anderson Gallery (VA), and Fried Fruit Gallery (NC). Currently, Christina is leading a program she developed called Craft and Culture Lab where teens are introduced to different craft practices and their evolutionary histories to explore how to keep craft alive with globalism and ongoing colonialism.

04/23

Las Niñas De Memes y Social Media

Kaelyn Andrade

“Las Niñas de Meme” is an art series that explores how social media portrays young girls through memes and various online platforms. The work delves into the unconventional and often exaggerated representations of girls, highlighting how they are frequently depicted as angry, violent, or even distorted versions of their true selves. This contrasts with historical depictions, like those in classic art, where young girls were shown through idealized or constrained roles. I’m particularly intrigued by how internet memes can serve as both a reflection of societal expectations and a platform for questioning them, challenging the way young girls are expected to behave and be seen.

Kaelyn Andrade is a multi-media Chicago artist. Kaelyn has a BA in Art and Art History from UIC and is currently working as a museum educator at the National Museum of Mexican Art. Kaelyn uses her work as a way to speak about her experiences as a woman and a Latina. She uses her Art history background and social political knowledge to create work that connects her personal experiences to larger issues. She creates connections through the use of historical knowledge and symbols that conflate with contemporary sources such as memes and other forms of social media.

04/30

Bulldagger: On Black Butch, Technology and Sound in the Midwest

Bri Robinson

This research explores the intersections of Black butch identity, technology, and sonic culture in the Midwest. It focuses on how gender nonconforming Black lesbians—often referred to as “bulldaggers” in historical and cultural contexts—have used sound and technology to shape their identities, create community, and navigate public to private space. While much scholarship on Black queer life centers the coasts, this study turns to the Midwest as a critical site of sonic and technological innovation, where working-class Black butches have historically engaged in DJing, radio, club culture, and independent media production as forms of self-expression and resistance.

Drawing from oral histories, archival materials, and contemporary artistic practices, this work considers how the manipulation of sound—through voice, music, and recording technologies—serves as both a survival strategy and a political tool for Black butches. Additionally, it interrogates the role of regionality in shaping gendered and racialized soundscapes, asking how Midwestern industrial histories, migration patterns, and racial segregation have influenced Black butch sonic practices.

By examining the ways Black butches in the Midwest have used technology and sound to assert their presence and autonomy, this research asks: How does sonic and technological innovation shape the legibility of Black butch identity across time and space?

Bri Robinson is a digital griot, art historian and midwestern propagandist with a focus on the intersections of art, technology, and the sociological