October 24, 2025
Day 1: Darkness & rebellion
Colored Girls Dormitory at Univeristy of Louisville’s Gottschalk Hall
vanessa german
about Vanessa
vanessa german (b. 1976, Milwaukee, WI) is a leading citizen artist working in sculpture, performance, and communal ritual to cultivate spiritual models for transforming human experience. Establishing her own self-taught approach and distinctive artistic language, german’s influential practice employs mineral crystals, beads, glass, found objects, and other sourced material to create expressive figurative sculptures that resound through the physical and metaphysical worlds. Her unique sculptural vocabulary transmits healing energy, affirming the power of love as an infinite human technology.
She has staged solo and two-person exhibitions at the NSU Art Museum (2024-25), Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago (2024), The Contemporary Dayton (2023), Montclair Art Museum (2023), Mt. Holyoke College Art Museum (2022), The Frick Pittsburgh (2021), Rockefeller Center (2020), Flint Institute of Arts (2019), among other museums. She has participated in group exhibitions at the National Mall, ICA Philadelphia, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Norton Museum of Art, and Albright-Knox Northland. Her work is held in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ; Mt. Holyoke College Museum of Art, South Hadley, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY.
Future Histories of Emancipation | A Three-Day Performance Series
The Louisville Industrial School of Reform, founded in 1854, was established to “rehabilitate” troubled juveniles. In 1896, the school opened the “Colored Girls Dormitory,” which first housed fifteen Black girls. Very little documentation survives from the dormitory’s history, aside from a Courier-Journal report detailing the courageous 1913 escape of six young women who tied bedsheets into a rope, climbed down the side of the building, and fled into the night.
In October of 2025, Future Histories of Emancipation, a three-day participatory performance series by artist vanessa german, was presented at the University of Louisville’s Gottschalk Hall (the former site of the Colored Girls Dormitory), the Belknap Playhouse Theater, and the Speed Art Museum. Drawing from Dr. Felicia Jamison’s research and Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, the series used the history of the dormitory as a point of departure to imagine emancipatory futures on the far side of capture.
Across three days, audiences moved through a funeral for freedom, an art studio at the edge of civilization, and a set of interactive imagination rituals. The performances featured VCR, a three-time Grammy-nominated violinist, along with Louisville-based dancers Michaiah Peebles, Brittany Renee, and Alexus Heard. Audience members were invited to participate through shared poems, live testimony, and collaborative mark-making.
In conjunction with the series, the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program also hosted a two-week takeover of the 24/7 public service hotline Dial-An-Ancestor, beginning Monday, October 20. Callers could listen, respond, or contribute messages to the ongoing archive.
Photography by Katya Gimro
October 25, 2025
Day 2: Threshold
University of Louisville’s Playhouse Theater
October 26, 2025
Day 3: Sacred
Speed Art Museum
Future Histories of Emancipation Collaborators
V.C.R (Veronica Camille Ratliff) is a three-time Grammy-nominated recording artist, violinist, composer, and sound artist from Memphis, Tennessee. A graduate of USC’s Thornton School of Musicwith a Master’s in Composition and recipient of the Presser Award, she fuses her Southern gospel roots with orchestral precision and experimental sound design. Her artistry has taken her to world-class stages, including Coachella, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Afropunk, and the Super Bowl LVI NFL Honors. Through her immersive sound experiences, she merges classical orchestration, field recordings, and experimental soul to explore memory, ritual, and collective healing through sound. Her work has been presented in major art institutions, including Jeffrey Deitch, The Getty Museum, The Broad, and The Underground Museum. As both a performer and composer, V.C.R has collaborated with visionary artists such as André 3000, Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, the Alice Coltrane Family, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Brittany Renee is a multi-hyphenate creative currently based out of her hometown, Louisville, Kentucky. A classically trained dancer by trade, she has grown her skillset to include choreography, teaching, performance poetry, written poetry, and creative direction. Brittany is an alum of the Kentucky Center Governor’s School for the Arts, the Youth Performing Arts School, and the University of Kentucky Dance program. She has danced with Keen Dance Theatre, Derby City Latin Dance, Baile Paris, and frequently performs in theatre, dance, and poetry shows locally. She also freelance instruct salsa, bachata, and modern dance and recently published her first poetry collection, Finding Phillis on the Dark Side of the Moon, in October 2024. Her work has been featured with Canvas Rebel Magazine, Afrique Noir Magazine, Bold Journey Magazine, and All Def Poetry.
Michaiah (Kiah) Peebles, was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Peebles began dancing at the age of six and currently dances with Keen Dance Theatre and Destined Dance Company. Outside of dancer she works at Tippi Toes Louisville, helping young dancers build confidence through movement.
Alexus Heard is a multidisciplinary artist and creative entrepreneur whose work bridges movement, fashion, and music. With twenty years of dance experience, she currently teaches intermediate and advanced hip-hop at Crestview Studios. Beyond the studio, Alexus is the founder of MOAO Customs, a streetwear brand known for its bold, customized designs that blend art and self-expression.
