Cannot wait to see you in Atlanta for the 2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange!
Join sessions like “A Welcome Weight on My Body: Affect, Black Visuality and Analogue Photography,” where artist Michele Pearson Clarke (@mpclarke ) will lead a theoretical discussion on affect, black visuality and analogue photography.
Learn more-- Link in BIO #spe #speforward #nationalconference #educators #photoconference #speatlanta #speatl #spe2026
MICHÈLE PEARSON CLARKE (February 16, 1973)
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Toronto-based filmmaker, photographer, writer, and arts educator whose multidisciplinary practice explores Black identity, queerness, grief, intimacy, and the emotional lives of Black communities in Canada. Her work often centers vulnerability as a political act, creating space for nuanced representations that challenge dominant narratives.
Clarke is widely recognized for her short documentary Black Men Loving, an intimate portrait series and film that foregrounds tenderness and emotional expression among Black men. She also directed All That We Carry, which examines mental health in Black communities through personal testimony, and Parade of Champions, a documentary exploring Caribbean beauty pageants in Toronto and their cultural significance.
In addition to her film work, Clarke’s photographic practice has been exhibited in galleries and festivals across Canada, and she has contributed to conversations about race, gender, and representation through both her artistic and community-based work. As a member of ACTRA, she is part of Canada’s professional community of performers while continuing to expand the possibilities of storytelling across mediums.
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#ACTRAWomen #CanadianArtists #BlackCanadianExcellence #TorontoCreatives #RepresentationMatters
Merry Merry Christmas, all you beautiful, sparkling babies. So much love and gratitude for the light that you bring into our lives. Keep shining my loves #merryandgay
Looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new colleagues next week as one of this year's invited cohort for the 4th edition of the Black Studies Summer Seminar (BLK-S3tudies) at Queen’s University. Thank you to the co-founders, Dr. Mark V. Campbell and Dr. Kristin Moriah, and to the rest of the organizing committee for bringing us all together 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
This on-campus, week-long research-intensive seminar is designed to produce generative and fruitful academic debates, and support the professional development of Ph.D. candidates, Postdoctoral Fellows, and pre-tenure faculty with lived experience of being racialized as Black.
There will be workshops, seminars, and 🔥hybrid public keynote lectures by @policingblack , @alexispauline and Joana Joachim, so please join us for those if you can #comethru #blkstudies
As Zora Neale Hurston famously wrote, there are years that ask questions and years that answer. For me, 2024 was a year that asked, as I found myself destabilized and disconnected from much of what I understood to be true, and feeling stuck both personally and professionally. Over the past few months, I’ve been working to find a way to shift things, and so my 2025 wish for myself and for you, my sweet babies, is for more movement and motion, towards healing, towards connection, towards liberation, towards justice, towards joy #goodnight2024
I missed posting about this yesterday, on their publication day, but 24 hours later, I am still beaming with delight at the arrival of this marvelous book, “Heavy Processing,” by my darling friends @trixctrix and @jsrault ! My favourite sentence in the book description just about sums it up: “Cowan and Rault offer heavy processing as a maximalist research method, consistent with a long and proud lesbian-leaning TFQ tradition of making a mountain out of a molehill.”
Guilty as charged (cough, cough).
You can download it for free or help support @punctum_books by purchasing a hard copy, with that gorgeous cover art by @jessmacurl , so you can be ready for the holiday processing season #heavyprocessing 🌈 ✨ 🌈 🎄
🎤✨ In der Ausstellung „Komm sing mit! Vom Erheben der Stimme“ hat Sarah Jonas gemeinsam mit Hemma Schmutz und Klaus Speidel ein kraftvolles Projekt kuratiert. Im Video gibt sie einen Einblick in Michèle Pearson Clarkes Arbeit “Quantum Choir”, bei der Gesang zur Ausdrucksform von Verletzlichkeit wird. 🌈🎶 Der Prozess des Singenlernens wird hier zum Symbol für eine persönliche Entwicklung, die eng mit der Auseinandersetzung mit ihrer queeren Identität verbunden ist. 💖💫
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🎤✨ In the exhibition „Come Sing Along! On Raising Our Voices,“ Sarah Jonas, together with Hemma Schmutz and Klaus Speidel, has curated a powerful project. In the video, she gives an insight into Michèle Pearson Clarke’s work “Quantum Choir”, where singing becomes an expression of vulnerability. 🌈🎶 The process of learning to sing is used as a symbol of personal development, intertwined with the exploration of her queer identity. 💖💫
Curators: Hemma Schmutz @hemmaschmutz , Klaus Speidel @dirtytheory , Sarah Jonas @saharajonas
Exhibition Design: Jakob Neulinger @jakob.neulinger
#KommSingMit #QuantumChoir #MichèlePearsonClark #QueerArt #VoiceAndIdentity #Ausstellung
It’s been a hell of a week to arrive in the U.S. for a residency at @vermontstudiocenter , and these first few days have been full of wonder and heartbreak. But I feel so grateful to be here, and to be surrounded by such care and inspiration as we mourn and marvel and make peace in whatever way we can right now #artistresidency #vermontstudiocenter #ShortestDistanceMPC
