Celia C. Peters’ residency was supported by the mediaThe Foundation, Inc., Black Art Futures Fund, Legacies for Iowa: A Stanley Museum of Art Collections-Sharing Project, Supported by the Matthew Bucksbaum Family, and Lauren Haldeman.
Celia C. Peters is a filmmaker and artist of the new millennium exploring the horizons of character-driven work featuring compelling stories and authentically diverse characters. She explores narratives rooted in the emotional complexity of the human experience. She has curated and produced panels, screenings, and readings of Afrofuturism and science fiction by Black creators at the California African American Museum, New York Comic Con, the 2017 Afropunk Festival, Tribeca Film Center, and the National Black Theater of Harlem. Her graphic art, photography and video work have shown at galleries in New York, London, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Detroit, Cleveland and Columbus. Peters’ prize-winning film work has been featured in the Talent Lab at the 2018 Reykjavik International Film Festival, CultivEight, a feature film development incubator sponsored by the NEA Art Works Program, the FAME Film/Arts Festival in London, and BET’s The Best Shorts series. She has also been awarded residencies at the Wexner Center for the Arts and Hawthornden International Retreat. artisticfreedomltd.com
During her residency, Peters conducted a workshop on storytelling for film at City High School with participants in the G!World program, recorded and edited the first episodes of her audio drama project Domesticated, and hosted Black Women Are the Future, a panel conversation with writer and editor Sheree Renée Thomas and artist, curator, and activist Ingrid LaFleur.
“I constantly strive for new ways to create stories and characters within the Afrofuturist tradition. As a Black woman, science fiction and Afrofuturism in particular offers the ultimate liberation from any sort of chains that constrict us to past experiential narratives--be they racial, gender-based, political social or anthropological.
The interpretation of this concept of Afrofuturism is wide-ranging and diverse, which is reflected in the selection of panelists, who are not only working in various capacities, but also coming to Afrofuturism from very unique perspectives with regard to storytelling. Beyond that, as a society we are facing an intriguing but challenging growth spurt that sees feminism, intersectionality, race and technology converging in often unexpected ways. The future lies before us unwritten and uncertain, but based on the path over which we have traveled, one thing that is certain is that Black women are claiming their place in the next evolution of the cultural vanguard.”
Watch a video interview with Celia produced by Little Village Magazine here.
