Printed Matter is pleased to present Poetry for Persistence, a new artist-driven digital and distributed exhibition, organized in collaboration with Press Press. For the project, eleven artists, writers, and organizers have produced risograph-printed artworks reflecting on a set of prompts and sharing visions of collectivity, care, joy, sanctuary, future, and possibility. What does our future look like? What does joy look and feel like? How can we hold ourselves and one another through grief and loss? How do we build sanctuary? How do we honor and care for the collective? What does liberation look like?

Alongside the riso prints, Poetry for Persistence also circulates care packets made up of collaborative xerox-printed artwork and poetry contributed by community members and gathered by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo and Kimi Hanauer. Print packets are freely distributed by mail to organizers, front-line workers, elders, and others who are collectively guiding us into a more just world in the midst of a global health crisis and fight for Black liberation. All are invited to contribute names of their loved ones and heroes to this growing list, with priority given to BIPOC LGBTQAI+ individuals.

Independent presses, artists, cultural organizers, and others are invited to participate by contributing uplifting poetry, quotes, and artwork — submissions will be printed and distributed in local communities and added to care packages. Please email presspresspublishing@gmail.com to get involved.

Poetry for Persistence:
A series of 11 multicolor riso posters
10 x 13.5"
50 copies available of each
$40

Current Future(s) by Nnennaya Amuchie
Nnennaya Amuchie is a diehard Black left genderqueer feminist and abolitionist, communist, organizer with Black Youth Project 100, published writer on police violence, and an attorney working to build movement lawyering infrastructure. They believe in a joyful and pleasurable future without police and prisons, where reproductive justice is actualized. @theafrolegalise

To Imagine Is To Reconfigure by as they lay, Abdu Ali + Karryl Eugene
as they lay (Abdu Ali and Karryl Eugene) is a nomadic curatorial, programming and art making initiative seeking to curate projects and community events that foster collaboration, creative action and reflection. Advocating for those who have been pushed into the margins with an emphasis on black liberation, the goal of as they lay is to curate a myriad of cultural programming and art that will aid in the transformation for a more sustainable, inclusive, nourishing, and interconnected creative climate for artists living in Baltimore. @astheylay

Abdu Ali is an American avant-garde electronic musician, writer, cultural worker, and multidisciplinary artist who primarily works in sound, dialogue, literary text, and social practice. Their work is a yielding poetic uprise that often interrogates ideas of identity as well as narrates and promotes liberation from oppressive ideologies and systems. @abdu__ali

Karryl Eugene is a multimedia artist based in Baltimore. He works in various mediums such as video art, sound art, and painting. Karryl’s work is defined by the power of reflection, we’re he unpacks personal narratives, nurtures his emotionality, and contemplates his existence in the digital age. @lyrrak_

Love to Black Bodies Always by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo is a Black, Latinx, queer artist, activist, educator, storyteller & curator who lives and works in Oakland, CA.Their work is informed by a commitment to craft and to community, engagement with society, and interests in storytelling and cultural geography. Through the processes of story collecting, printmaking, painting, performance, sculpture building and curating, they strive to re-create and re-tell their personal tales and those of the people that surround them. Lukaza’s work has most recently been in community with See Black Womxn Collective, No Neutral Alliance and CTRL+SHFT Collective. @bluekaza

A Survey of Joyful Sensations by Denise Shanté Brown
Denise Shanté Brown is a holistic design strategist living in Baltimore whose lifeswork centers the wellbeing and brilliance of Black womxn and folx who hold marginalized identities. Wholeheartedly and with no apologies. @denise.om.shanti

Reconnect with Your Habit, Habitat, and Critters by Taeyoon Choi
Taeyoon Choi is an artist based in New York and Seoul. He seeks a sense of gentleness, justice, solidarity, and intellectual kinship. In 2013, he co-founded the School for Poetic Computation where he continues to teach. He co-organized the Code Ecologies conference about the environmental impact of technology with Nabil Hassein and Sonia Boller. He also co-organized the New York Tech Zine Fair with Mimi Onuoha, Ritu Ghiya, and Neta Bomani. He works with the Deaf and Disability community to enhance accessibility and inclusion in art and technology education. https://sfpc.io/ @drwngdrwng @sfpc_nyc/

Stoop Hang. Janguendo en la acera) by Lizania Cruz
Lizania Cruz is a Dominican participatory artist, designer, and curator interested in how migration affects ways of being & belonging. Through research, oral history, and audience participation, she creates projects that highlight a pluralistic narrative on migration. Cruz has been an artist-in-residence and fellow at the Laundromat Project Create Change (2018-2019), Agora Collective Berlin (2018), Design Trust for Public Space (2018), Recess Session (2019), IdeasCity:New Museum (2019), Stoneleaf Retreat (2019), Robert Blackburn Workshop Studio Immersion Project (SIP) (2019), and A.I.R. Gallery (2020-2021). @lizaniacruz

from an I into a We by Kimi Hanauer
Kimi Hanauer is an artist, cultural organizer, and writer based in Los Angeles. Kimi is the founding editor of Press Press, a publishing studio that aims to shift and deepen the understanding of voices, identities, and narratives that have been suppressed or misrepresented by the mainstream. Kimi initiates and produces texts, installations, publications, and events where new modes of collectivity, belonging, and power-sharing can be developed and practiced. @kimi_hanauer @presspressbmore

…a little wilder by Georgia McCandlish
Georgia McCandlish is a disgruntled gay leo making things in baltimore, md. They make drawings, prints, installations and tattoos. They are a co-founder of Fruit Camp, a multidisciplinary queer arts and tattooing studio, the creator of PEACH PITS zine and an organizer with Baltimore Jail Support. @ghostnests @fruit.camp

Skyy by SHAN Wallace
SHAN Wallace (b. 1991) is a nomadic award-winning visual artist, photographer, educator and freedom fighter from East Baltimore, MD. Inspired by the harsh racial, social and economic realities of her surroundings in Baltimore, SHAN learned about the importance of service, the power of collaboration and the effects of social change at an early age. Now, she uses her lens, collage and in situ installations as the basis of her work, demonstrating the cultural and political narratives of black life, confronting oppressive politics and histories within communities of the African diaspora, and challenging ideas surrounding existing collections, culture and archives of Blackness. Much of SHAN Wallace’s work is focused on the Archive– its history of development, challenges of the modern Archive, Archive as Artwork and how to ethically accumulate primary source documents. @_yoshann @sisterswithstories

a note for the comrades by Bilphena Yahwon
Bilphena Yahwon is a Baltimore based writer, abolitionist and restorative practices specialist born in Liberia, West Africa. Yahwon is the author of ‘teaching gold-mah how to heal herself.’ the co-creator of For Black Girls Considering Womanism Because Feminism Is Not Enuf and a core member of Press Press. Her online library, The Womanist Reader, is dedicated to archiving free texts from Black women across the diaspora. Bilphena’s work uses a womanist approach and centers women’s health and well being, intersectionality and abolition. She writes of the immigrant experience, of blackness, and of healing. @goldwomyn

On Sanctuary by Mimi Zhu
mimi zhu (they/she) is a queer Chinese-Australian writer who grew up in Brisbane and Singapore and is usually based in Brooklyn. they believe in the radical healing powers of the written word. they feel that there are two fundamental emotions, fear and love, and their work endeavors to dive into understanding and befriending them both. @mizhuxiyuan