BLK/JA/WC is the research phase of a forthcoming group exhibition and residency initiative connecting Black artists from the West Coast of the United States and Jamaica. Inspired by Jamaican author and activist Erna Brodber’s cultural organization b l a c k s p a c e located in St. Mary Parish on the northeast of the island, the project explores diasporic exhibition-making, the historical and contemporary artistic ties between these regions, and the role of institutions as collaborative spaces for dialogue.
Adee Roberson and Azikiwe Mohammed: because i am that, California African American Museum (CAAM), Los Angeles, November 1, 2022–May 7, 2023. Courtesy CAAM. Photo: Elon Schoenholz
Essence Harden will engage artist communities, archives, and institutions in St. Mary Parish and the Jamaican cities of Kingston, Portland, and Negril, alongside Los Angeles; the Bay Area; and Portland, Oregon, in the US. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Adee Roberson, a Jamaican American visual and performance artist, and Barrington Darrius, a filmmaker who will document the research process and produce a visual component for the exhibition.
BLK/JA/WC is grounded in Black geography and African Diaspora studies, drawing on texts by Fred Moten, Katherine McKittrick, and Carole Boyce Davies to examine visual traditions, cultural resonances, and the movement of people and ideas between the Caribbean and the US West Coast. The project challenges Atlantic-bound migration frameworks by tracing transnational connections across rural and urban sites, revealing shared investments in assemblage, spiritual abstraction, and experimental form. The first public program will take place at
Sovern, a community space and gallery in Los Angeles in 2026.
Essence Harden is a cocurator of Made in L.A. 2025 at The Hammer Museum at UCLA and Curator of the Focus section for Frieze Los Angeles (2024–26). Harden has curated exhibitions at the California African American Museum (CAAM) (Los Angeles), the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), Art + Practice (Los Angeles), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) (San Francisco), and the Oakland Museum of California, amongst others. Harden is a contributor to the Los Angeles Times Image, Cultured, Performa Magazine, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA), SSENSE, Art21, Artsy, and to exhibition catalogs, most recently Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living (Delmonico Books/Hammer Museum, 2023). Harden is a 2018 recipient of a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and a 2020 Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellow. Harden previously served as a Visual Arts Curator at CAAM.