Dreams happen when we are fully at rest, when the mind, freed from pressing matters of daily life, journeys to places both within and beyond our imagination. In dreaming, we deal with the concerns we haven’t yet resolved in waking life. We conjure other possibilities and envision other ways of being—that is—other futures. But resting, dreaming and visioning rely on conducive environmental circumstances, and for constituencies such as Black and Indigenous women, those circumstances are anything but equal.

Digital quilt squares generated by the Cosmologyscape dream portal using dreams submitted by individuals from the greater Boston area. Image courtesy the artists and Wagner Foundation.

Dreams, rest, imagination, and creativity are the material technologies employed in the shared practice of multimedia artists Kite and Alisha B Wormsley. For them, art is dreaming made physical, and incorporating Black and Indigenous women’s dreams into their art is a step towards collective agency.

Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta) is an artist, composer, and scholar whose work merges Lakȟóta knowledge systems with performance, sound, sculpture, and computational media. Wormsley is a Pittsburgh-based artist, teacher, and cultural producer who works at the intersections of public art, film, craft and social practice.

Since 2020, Kite and Wormsley have been collaborating on a collective dream project with Black and Indigenous women that honors dreams by physically manifesting them using ancient and new technologies: language, quilting, geometric symbolism, and computational algorithms. Cosmologyscape, commissioned by Creative Time after Kite and Wormsley won their 2022 Open Call, made the dream project public. The artists created furniture for resting and gathering at the Plaza at 300 Ashland in Brooklyn, decorated with the geometric interpretation of submitted dreams.

“A tool of the oppressor is for us not to be planning, not to be dreaming.... We are not supposed to dream, so there must be extreme power there. ”

— Alisha B. Wormsley

This year, Cambridge, MA-based Wagner Foundation invited the artists to reimagine their project for a multipart show taking over three rooms of the Wagner Gallery titled Welcome to the Cosmologyscape. Wormsley and Kite were invited to “expand their research through a series of interconnected forms: a contextual diagram created with design studio Omnivore; furniture co-produced with Indigenous students from the University of Manitoba; and a “dream office” inviting visitors to rest, reflect, and enter the imaginative space of the project.” (Wagner Gallery).

Tomorrow, June 20, the longest day of the year, the artists extend the Wagner exhibition to the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, MA. In honor of Juneteenth and the Summer solstice, they have planned a day to engage with a broader community of dreamers in Boston. The day, funded by the Wagner Foundation as part of their commitment to “envision a repeatable, rooted model for community-based dreamwork and technological collaboration,” will include calming workshops and community gathering, inviting participants to connect, reflect and dream together. Collaborators of the free, all inclusive day include: yoga teacher Marlene Boyette, Síofra, Ja’Hari Ortega, Jordan Nelson, and DJ Math3ca. All are welcome, no registration required.

“This iteration at Wagner Foundation has given us the opportunity to zoom out and express how our methodology for community dreaming is adaptable to the needs of Black and Indigenous communities. We have imagined our methods as interconnected worlds of ancestors and decision-making, expanding how we express those methods through experimental dream furniture, handmade textiles, and mural-sized graphics.”

— Alisha B. Wormsley and Kite

As Black and Indigenous women, Kite and Wormsley ask what does it mean to dream today? And what does dreaming mean in a place like the Slave Quarters where 60 enslaved people lived? Their futuring incorporates ancient wisdom and ancestral technologies. Their dreaming invites the community to pool their energy as a way to counter cultural toxicity: insistent productivity, unrecognized labor, and disregarded histories.

“You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream, and to connect.”

— Tricia Hersey, ("Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto")

Cosmologyscape: Day of Dreaming
Come Dream Together on the Summer Solstice and Juneteenth!
Saturday, June 20– 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Royall House and Slave Quarters (15 George Street Medford, MA)

Wagner Gallery is free and open to the public by appointment every Wednesday 12 - 5pm
485 Massachusetts Ave, 2nd Floor. Cambridge, MA 02139