the WILD

The Wild is a series of pop-up bookstores and art experiences inspired by the tradition and history of black fugitives, maroons, refugees and exiles. The Wild is a meeting ground for Black togetherness that seeks to cultivate an intimate and liberated space for Black people through the curation of books and events. 

the WILD intentionally cultivates a space of disorder and rejects notions of respectability and order as a standard.

the WILD is a meeting ground for Black togetherness that cultivates a liberated space through the curation of books and events.

the WILD seeks to be an otherwise space where art serves as a wayfinder to liberation. 

Initiated by me and my co-founder of Amsterdam Black Women — Tracian Meikle.

We must, on behalf of this alignment, refuse that which was first refused to us and in this refusal reshape desire, reorient hope, reimagine possibility and do so separate from the fantasies nestled into rights and respectability.

Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons

W139, 2023

This iteration of the WILD reconvened graduated artists from the Blacker Blackness temporary masters program — a constellation of diasporic artists unpacking what it means to make and share art together.

Collectivity is a messy, complicated thing. Here, now, we take up space, experiment as individuals and continue to dream of collectivity.

W139, 2022

In this two-part, zine-making workshop we tended to diaspora and migration — exploring ways to answer the question "where are you from" outside colonial logics of borders and nation-states.

What are the spaces that made you?

Eleven of us gathered. We collaged material from Black literature and personal archives, building individual zines that were then compiled into one collective object everyone took home. Roadmaps for liberation, risoprinted.

W139, 2021

As part of a larger installation at W139 in Amsterdam, the WILD set up a pop-up bookshop and community space inspired by our aunties. We played with concepts of transparency and opacity

the WILD contends that conversations that claim to bridge polarities often function as ways to silence Blackness.

the WILD isn’t interested in this kind of solidarity.

the WILD is a space outside of polarity, is not part of the war, is not at the peace table.

the WILD asserts its right to opacity, our right to be left alone.

NeverNeverLand, 2020

The first iteration of the WILD was born out of absence. In Amsterdam, gatherings of Blackness are rare. Gatherings with the stated intention of togetherness, intimacy, and using art and literature to go deep — rarer still.

NeverNeverLand was a three-day curated exhibition and book-buying experience co-created with Tracian Meikle. I rooted the experience in literature; Tracian in visual art. Together we held a space for connecting and going wide and deep about what it meant to be alive and Black — in this city, in our bodies, and in this moment.