All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

About The Event

Join artist Anwulika Anigbo, of The Love Ethic Project, and Megha Ralapati, of CEC ArtsLink, for a book circle on All About Love: New Visions (1999) by bell hooks.

This text, which offers a proactive approach to love and insights into the roots of our personal and cultural understanding of love, made a surge into popular culture during the pandemic years and has remained in heavy circulation since. Join us for a discussion into what we might learn from hooks and her “proactive new ethic for a people and society bereft with lovelessness.” This participatory event is intended for anyone interested in the topic, regardless of familiarity with the book or author.

For planning purposes, advance registration is suggested. Please register on Eventbrite.

Guest bios:

Anwulika Anigbo (b. Nigeria 1987) is a Chicago-based artist tracing the historical and somatic roots of everyday life as it is practiced within blackness through imagery and processes. Her work chronicles and investigates self-determination, presence, knowledge production, and memory.  At any given moment we stand at the intersection of histories, embodying and accessing more than what we have personally experienced. How far back and forward can individual and collective memory take the process of self-determination? Anigbo’s work uses familiar personal moments and cultural references to access somatic memory and histories of self-determination layered onto our most rudimentary and interior moments. She uses deep embodiment to make meaning at the intersections of life by rooting her practice in creation as a continuous process of personal and domestic liberation. Her work has been exhibited at The Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (South Korea), Chicago Artist Coalition(Chicago), EXPO Chicago with FOR FREEDOMS (Chicago) and the NXTHVN (New Haven). She was recently a 2022-23 Fellow with the Economic Security Project, the December 2022 and January 2023 Artist in Residence at Chicago Athletic Association, a 2021-22 Artist in Residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition, and a 2022 3Arts Ignite Fund Awardee. Her work is included in the collection at 21c Museum, Ryan Lee Gallery, and private collections.

Megha Ralapati is a curator, writer and art programmer who specializes in artist development, mobility and has developed collaborative programs for artistic exchange with community-centered organizations based in the US and internationally, including Project Row Houses (Houston), ARTPORT Tel Aviv, and Center for Contemporary Art Lagos. Megha regularly participates in award and fellowship juries, presents workshops to artists of all levels, including at the School of the Art Institute, NYU, and most recently Asiko, an experimental pan-African summer intensive for artists. Her writing has been included in publications for Documenta 14, Brooklyn Museum, Sharjah Art Foundation, among others. Over her career, she has produced dynamic arts programming that centers the transformative relationship between artists, their ideas, and multigenerational audiences. Megha received an MA in Visual Culture from Goldsmiths and a BA in Art History and Anthropology from Columbia University. She is currently Program Director of Fellowships at CEC ArtsLink, and participates as board member of Artist Communities Alliance and Enrich Chicago.