Space for Us: Afrofuturism and the Poetic Imagination

Space for Us: Afrofuturism and the Poetic Imagination is a multidisciplinary exhibition that seeks to usher in a new Houston by exploring both the historical and contemporary demands of organizers, poets, archivists, and community members within this city. Pairing photos and materials from the archives of the African American History Research Center at the Gregory Campus with multilingual poems exploring ideas of home, community and imagined futures, audiences will experience the urgency of worldbuilding, using the tools we have and the tools we create, to actualize a liberated Houston. Alongside these poems and archives, a poetic tapestry of interviews from Black community leaders across Greater Houston will showcase the present organizing efforts that move through, beyond, and alongside the page to create the Houston we deserve. Through this exploration of poetry, preservation and movement building, Space for Us is a poetic manifesto of this audacious city we aim to see in our lifetime and long after.

Facilitated as part of Aris Kian Brown's community outreach project as 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate, this exhibition aims to challenge the boundaries between art and organizing, protest and poetics, imagination and demand. Audiences will be able to engage with the demands of Houstonians in real time, allowing the urgency of poetry to serve as a tool for contemporary organizing, worldbuilding, and language justice for communities in Houston fighting for all marginalized people.

JOIN US

Opening Reception - March 20, 2025 | 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Rap & Poetry Workshops for Teens

Creative Writing Club for Adults

Summer Reading for Grown-Ups: Talking Poetry

EXPLORE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Ben Desoto Photographs Collection (MSS 0118)

The Ben Desoto Photographs Collection documents his career in Houston as a freelance photographer and as a photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle and Houston Post from the 1980s to 2020s. This collection contains over 30,000 photographic items including photographs, negatives and slides, newspapers, and notebooks that depict life in minority communities and the early stages of gentrification in historically Black neighborhoods and hip hop and rock music during the 1980s and early 1990s. His work captures Freedmen's Town, the Allen Parkway Village and Direct Exposure youth projects along with local social problems including homelessness and poverty in his Understanding Poverty Project.

Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes Collection (RG 0047)

The Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes began as a dream of Anna Dupree. Dupree moved to Houston from Galveston in 1916. When the Eliza Johnson Home opened in June 1952, it was largely due to her determination and resources, as well as support and encouragement of her husband, Clarence (C.A.) and others in the black community. The goal of the Home - located on a 35-acre tract off Chocolate Bayou Road in the historically black neighborhood of Sunnyside - was basic: to provide a place “where our old people enjoy kind, human care and freedom from fear and want in their remaining days.”

Black Photographic Collection (MSS 0137)

This collection is composed of mostly photographic images having to do with African Americans in the Houston area from 1896 to 1968. Except for its singular focus on images of African Americans, this collection is miscellaneous. Several of the photographs are of Jack Johnson, the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion and a Juneteenth Parade float. Some images are tintypes of well-dressed people in Third Ward and downtown Houston during the early 20th century.

CHECK OUT THE CATALOG

Adult

• Anastacia-Reneé, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere
• Brookins, KB, Freedom House: Poems
• Duplan, Anais, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture
• Hersey, Tricia, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto
• National Museum of African American History and Culture, Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn (ed.), Houston Noir

Works by past Poet Laureates

• Davidson, Robin, City that Ripens on the Tree of the World
• Davidson, Robin, Luminous Other
• Mouton, Deborah D.E.E.P., Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood, and Myth
• Schwartz, Leslie Contreras, From the Womb of Sky and Earth
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn, Better With You Here
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn, Falling in Love With Fellow Prisoners: Poems
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn, Houston We Have a Problema
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn, Monsters, Zombies + Addicts: Poems

This exhibition is generously supported by Houston Public Library, Houston Public Library Foundation, and the City of Houston.