The Future Of Contracts
Maia Chao, Mira Dayal, Anaïs Duplan, Yxta Maya Murray, and Simon Wu
June 22, 2021 | 6:00 - 7:30pm EDT 
In early 2021, the exhibition “Drawn Together” opened at Cuchifritos gallery. The project as a whole focused on the contractual underpinnings of power, the etymology and embodiment of the word contract, and the potential for values-driven, constituent-led conversations to lead to positive, systemic change within an institution. The artists and curators share their process, translation, and recommendations for the creation of contracts that recognize vulnerability, power dynamics, and intersectionality.
Artists and organizations looking to create an infrastructure that more accurately reflects their values and priorities are encouraged to watch.
About the Speakers
Maia Chao is an interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia. She is co-creator of Look at Art. Get Paid., which is currently sponsored by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Chao has shown at The Shed, The New School, Tufts University, Brown University, and RISD Museum; and given talks at ICA Philadelphia, Queens Museum, and MFA Boston. She was recently an artist in residence at Haverford College and Pioneer Works. She is faculty in the Sculpture Department at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). 
Mira Dayal is an artist, editor, and critic based in New York. She is a co-organizer of the residency program rehearsal, co-curator of the collaborative artist publication prompt:, founding editor of the Journal of Art Criticism, Ideas Editor at Art in America, and a regular contributor at Artforum, where she was previously an associate editor. She is currently editing a book about intersectional solidarity and feminism in art criticism, to be published with Paper Monument this fall.
Anaïs Duplan is a trans poet, curator, and artist. He has taught poetry at several colleges and universities and is the author of a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). Duplan’s video works and curatorial projects have been exhibited internationally. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at MoMA and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an Iowa City-based artist residency program for artists of color. He works as Program Manager at Recess.
Yxta Maya Murray is a novelist, art critic, playwright, and law professor. The author of nine books, her most recent are the story collection, The World Doesn’t Work That Way, but It Could (University of Nevada Press, 2020), and the novel, Art Is Everything (TriQuarterly Press, 2021). She has won a Whiting Award, an Art Writer’s Grant, and has been named a fellow at the Huntington Library for her work on radionuclide contamination in Simi Valley, California.
Simon Wu is a writer and curator involved in collaborative art production and research. He currently serves as the Program Coordinator for the Racial Imaginary Institute and is a contributor to Artforum, BOMB, Frieze, and The Brooklyn Rail. He was formerly a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He is based between Brooklyn and Philadelphia.