Seeing Otherwise: Black Womanhood and the Matrilineal Archive

On March 15th, join us for a CPW Conversations panel that treats history as a living, relational, and deeply human space. On the panel are: Qiana Mestrich, Winner of CPW’s 2025 Saltzman Prize for Emerging Photographer; Channon Anita Simmons, sister and collaborator of artist Nona Faustine (1969-2025); Lesly Deschler Canossi, photography educator and cultural producer; and Zoraida Lopez-Diago, independent curator and intersectional environmentalist.

Centered on ideas and questions that inform two current CPW exhibitions, Seeing Otherwise brings together Faustine’s What My Mother Gave Me–the first-ever retrospective of her decades-long practice–and Mestrich’s Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate, featuring her ongoing collage series The Reinforcements. Through photographs, (auto)biography, and archival practices, both artists confront historical absence and distortion, asking: How do images shape what we know about history and what we remember? How can we re-frame our histories with fuller perspectives?