Alethea Pace

Listening With: P.S. 48 and Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School

In collaboration with Justin Czarka, a passionate advocate for the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Project and an esteemed public school educator, and Aleta Brown, an exceptionally talented artist and educator, Pace engaged students from P.S. 48 and Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School. The vibrant gathering unfolded at BronxArtSpace in Hunts Point, where high school students skillfully guided their elementary counterparts in painting stones to honor loved ones. Post-lunch, the group strolled to the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground at Drake Park, participating in a poignant ceremony involving libation and the placement of painted stones beside the willow tree. Wrapping up the day with games, they infused the park with an atmosphere of joy and camaraderie.

MetFest, October 21, 2023

The Met’s biannual, Museum-wide block party was a celebration of the creative spirit of New York City that brought together artists, including the CPP artists-in-residence, and community partners from across New York City to share live music, performances, art-making activities, unique tours, and more. Pace brought the Bronx to the stage, sharing an excerpt of her performance work, Here goes the neighborhood…. A fusion of movement and theater, the piece conjures memories born from the turmoil, vibrancy, and resilience of the Bronx and its people. Created, in part, through a practice of oral history walks, it serves as a reminder of the wealth of knowledge we hold in our bodies, memories, and histories.

between wave and water,
work-in-progress sharing,
May 18, 2024

Pace and her collaborators offered a glimpse into the creative process of between wave and water, a performance work rooted in the history of the Enslaved African Burial Ground in Hunts Point. The work-in-progress sharing and post-performance talkback at BAAD!/Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, in part, honored Aunt Rose, an enslaved person whose final resting place remains uncertain. While she may have been buried in Hunts Point, a conflicting account suggests she could have been interred at St. Peter’s Cemetery, where BAAD! is located. Through storytelling, song, and dance, the work highlighted these gaps in the archival record while offering transformative counter-narratives.

Image: Darvejon Jones. Photo by Whitney Browne

between wave and water,
September 29, 2024

Pace concluded her two-year Civic Practice Partnership residency with between wave and water, a site-specific ritual performance walk aimed at contesting and reclaiming the history of the Enslaved African Burial Ground in Hunts Point. The audience embarked on both a literal and metaphorical journey, traveling from the Burial Ground to the Bronx River at Hunts Point Riverside Park. Guided by fragments of ancestral memory, attendees navigated the industrial streets of Hunts Point, where storytelling, song, and dance occupied street corners, and transformed them into sites of remembrance and resistance. Audience members were invited to actively participate by making offerings, singing, dancing, evoking ancestors, and visioning a future rooted in liberation.

Image: Cast of between wave and water. Photo by Whitney Browne

Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room

The Met’s exhibition Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room imagines what could have been if a Black community had thrived in Seneca Village (near The Met in what is now Central Park). During her CPP artist residency, Pace’s performance work entitled between wave and water (see above) took inspiration from the kaleidoscopic nature of the Afrofuturist period room, weaving a time-traveling journey through Hunts Point that collapsed the distance between past and future.

Learn more about Before Yesterday We Could Fly.

Bélizaire and the Frey Children

Not long after the image of Bélizaire was painted over in this portrait, the Enslaved African Burial Ground in Hunts Point in the Bronx was covered with fill, and razed to construct the street. Recognizing these forms of erasure as strategies to uphold white supremacy, Pace’s work considers how we can honor the humanity of our ancestors without engaging in practices that reenact violence or trauma.

Learn more about Bélizaire and the Frey Children.

William Forbes’s Waste Bowl

Objects like William Forbes’s Waste Bowl (1835–40) are preserved in glass cases, cleaned and maintained by conservationists, protected by security guards, and visited by museum goers over a century later. Less than 7 miles away, Aunt Rose, a nanny enslaved by the Legget family, was one of the last people to be interred at the Hunts Point Enslaved African Burial Ground some time in the 1840s. Pace’s work as a CPP artist-in-residence brings these disparate histories into contact and prompts a critical examination of notions of value in various spheres.

Learn more about this waste bowl.