This workshop, titled Griot to Griot, is led by artist Oreoluwa Akinyode. This will be the second iteration of the workshop, the first held in July at a free virtual wellness retreat for BIPOC + trans individuals.
This is Oreoluwa’s description of the event. “Griot to Griot is a workshop that invites individuals to pass a story to one another within a communal learning and sharing space. Participants are invited to come to this workshop with a short story about themselves, their life, their community, where they come from, and truly any niche story one wants to live through the passing of open secrets. In this workshop I invite participants to demystify archival methods and exalt the history of traditional oral storytelling with me. In this writing and performance based workshop I will also be sharing writing, short film, musical and sonic examples of the storytellers who paved the way for me to think of the ways a story can take shape and morph into something new everyday.”
This workshop is held in conjunction with the exhibition, “Pitted: Home at the Heart of an empire.” Grounded in the shared experience of growing up under rapid synchronized development of the internet and the climate crisis, participating artists consider the impermanence that has dictated our lives. Pitted features the work of 21 current or former Baltimore residents and members of PULP Collective, a group of artists dedicated to maintaining a space to support each other’s continued practices. The exhibition will take place at AREA 405, on display from October 10 to November 21, 2025. Through fiber, sculpture, painting, and digital media, the artists in this exhibition ground themselves in acts of care, remembering, and collective imagining — asking what it means to root ourselves in unstable ground.