Center for Art,
Research and Alliances
May 29, 2025

The Future of Black Feminist Archives: Performance Reading by Nydia A. Swaby and Conversation with Zakiya Collier

Publication Cover
Snapshots from Amy Ashwood Garvey's journey to West Africa, 1946-1949. Amy is pictured wearing kente, engaged in a gathering with Ashanti King Prempeh II, and addressing an audience with her characteristic poise. Courtesy of Patricia and Phillip Maillard.

Join us for a performance reading by artist-researcher, writer, and curator Nydia A. Swaby, drawn from her book Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives (Lawrence Wishart, 2024).

Through archival images, autoethnography, and visual storytelling, Swaby traces her research into the legacy of Pan-African feminist Amy Ashwood Garvey, reflecting on what it means to curate a Black feminist archive from the fragments, silences, and scattered geographies that shaped her life.

Following the reading, Swaby will be joined by archivist and memory worker Zakiya Collier for a conversation on Black feminist archival practice and the possibilities it opens for reimagining both historical memory and contemporary cultural work. Together, they will reflect on how they tend to the traces of Black women’s lives and consider what it means to build and sustain archives rooted in care, kinship, and collective memory.

Nydia A. Swaby is a Black feminist artist-researcher, writer, and curator. Her practice engages archives, autoethnography, photography, the moving image, and the imagination to explore the gendered, diasporic, and affective dimensions of Black being and becoming. Nydia is a member of the editorial board for Feminist Review and co-edited its Archives issue. She holds a PhD from the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London and has previously worked at the ICA, London and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Nydia was the inaugural Caird Research Fellow jointly based at Royal Museums Greenwich and The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. She is currently a Whose Heritage Curatorial Fellow at Royal Museums Greenwich and contributes to the advisory board for the Atlantic Worlds Gallery at the National Maritime Museum in London. Nydia’s film daughter(s) of diaspora was installed as part of the exhibition Archive of One’s Own at the Singapore International Photography Festival. Her book, Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives, was published in October 2024 as part of Lawrence Wishart's Radical Black Women series.

Nydia Swaby, Photo: Stephanie Land
Nydia Swaby, Photo: Stephanie Land

Zakiya Collier is an Afro-Carolinian archivist, memory worker, and educator. Her work and research explore archival practices that account for the material conditions of Black life and the role of cooperative thought in the sustainability of cultural memory. She leads The Black Memory Workers, a community of 250+ Black-diasporic memory workers committed to practicing care and intention as they prioritize the documentation, long-term preservation, and celebration of Black life and experiences. Their recent experience includes being the Program Director for Archiving the Black Web, co-producing the forthcoming documentary film Somebody’s Gone, serving as the first Digital Archivist at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and co-editing a special double issue of The Black Scholar on Black Archival Practice.

Zakiya Collier, Photo: Luz Gallardo for ITVS
Zakiya Collier, Photo: Luz Gallardo for ITVS

The Future of Black Feminist Archives
Performance Reading by Nydia A. Swaby and Conversation with Zakiya Collier

Thursday, May 29, 2025
7pm, Doors 6:30pm

Free and open to all. RSVP encouraged.

Please note that your RSVP does not guarantee entry. Admission is on a first come, first served basis (even for those who have registered) and will be limited to the capacity of the venue. We encourage RSVPs to gauge interest in our programs.

We ask that visitors stay home if they are feeling sick or have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 10 days. Testing before joining us at CARA is recommended. Masks will be available for free.

The closest wheelchair accessible subway is the 14th Street/8th Avenue station. The entrance to CARA is ADA-compliant, and our bookstore and galleries are barrier free throughout, with all-gender, wheelchair accessible restrooms. CARA has wheelchairs available for guest use. Please request one in advance via bookstore@cara-nyc.org. Service animals are welcome.

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