We Have Reach

Spring 2025

We Have Reach is an exhibition of visual and performance art that considers how the Black feminine has been restricted, exploited, expelled, or compelled in relation to taking up space. The curatorial group Studio AGD—a collaboration of Folasade Adesanya, Zoe Butler, and Bennington literature faculty member Anaïs Duplan—conceptualized this project to facilitate a conversation about the friction, endurance, and possibility of an empowered and expansive Black femme figure within her exterior environment.

Exhibition themes include the extent of the body across time and space, fugitive movement and fugitive stillness, exploitative fecundity, and the longing of the Black feminine body and consciousness for heaven and home. In dialogue with historical muses including Henrietta Lacks and Anarcha Westcott, We Have Reach features works by artists Keren Alfred, Zoe Butler, Sonya Dyer, fields harrington, Anina Major, Sherae Rimpsey, and Nastassja E. Swift. On view February 25-April 26, 2025. The exhibition catalog, with an essay by Folasade Adesanya, can be viewed here. 

Exhibition programming included:

_Performances during the February 25 opening reception by Zoe Butler and Sherae Rimpsey

_A screening of films by Sonya Dyer Yuko Edwards, and Steffani Jemison in Tishman Auditorium on April 15, with audience conversation facilitated by An Duplan and Bennington student Edna Ndayisaba

The presentation of the Sonya Dyer sculpture Andromeda Mission: Anarcha Prototype II (2019) is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. 

Image: Detail, video still from Sonya Dyer, Action>Potential, 2023