LIVE PRIDEFULLY: Love and Resilience within Pandemics - Photoville 2023

Exhibition on view: May 1, 2023 - June 30, 2023
Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto Park: 95th Ave. between 126th & 127th Streets South Richmond Hill, NY 11419

The Caribbean Equality Project is excited to partner with Queens Museum and Photoville 2022 to bring our outdoor photography exhibition, Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics, to Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto Park in Richmond Hill, Queens, on view from May 1 to June 30, 2023. Shown at Brooklyn Bridge Park during the 2022 Photoville Festival, this exhibition will be the first Photoville installation in Richmond Hill, home to largely Indo-Caribbean and South-Asian immigrant communities where Caribbean Equality Project is based. This interdisciplinary exhibition was originally presented at the Queens Museum from December 4, 2021, to March 6, 2022, as part of the Year of Uncertainty.

Exhibition Opening Celebration:

Date: Saturday, May 6 | 2:30 PM
Location: Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto Park 95th Ave. between 126th & 127th Streets South Richmond Hill, NY 11419
RSVP Here: bit.ly/LivePridefullyRichmondHill
Free and open to the public!

Caribbean Equality Project’s Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics celebrates queer and trans Caribbean resilience through a racial justice lens, fostering critical conversations related to pride, migration, surviving colliding pandemics, and coming out narratives. Caribbean diasporic immigrant rights, gender justice, and trans rights advocates live at the intersections of outdated immigration policies, anti-Black violence, racism, homophobia, transphobia, gender-based violence, xenophobia, and misogyny in the United States and throughout the Caribbean region. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, queer and trans immigrants of color have lived in a constant state of fear and isolation, from food insecurity, and a lack of access to equitable healthcare, to rising rates of anti-Asian violence and police brutality against Black bodies. Live Pridefully reimagines and affirms undocumented Black and Brown LGBTQ+ immigrants and asylum seekers as essential workers, creatives, and contributors to the cultural diversity of New York City, by highlighting the work of seven activists and community members: Rajiv Mohabir, Qween Jean, Rohan Zhou-Lee, Darren J. Glenn, Tannuja Rozario, Theo Brown, and Tiffany Jade Munroe.

Please join us on May 6, 2023, for the exhibition launch with the Queens Museum, Photoville, and the staff of Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto Park.

If you would like to read extended texts about the exhibition, the Moko Jumbie, and the project participants, you may do so here.

Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics is curated by Mohamed Q. Amin, Founder and Executive Director of Caribbean Equality Project. 

Photography: Christian Thane
Visual Director: Richard Ramsundar

Click here to learn more about Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics.

The opening celebration program features performances by Afro and Indo-Caribbean LGBTQ+ artists.

About the Collaborators:

The Caribbean Equality Project (CEP) is a Queens-based community organization that empowers, advocates for, and represents Black and Brown, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender non-conforming, and queer Caribbean immigrants in New York City. The organization’s work focuses on advocacy for LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights, gender equity, racial justice, immigration and mental health services, and ending hate violence in the Caribbean diaspora. To date, CEP is the only educational-based agency serving the Caribbean-American LGBTQ+ community in New York City, with a dedicated aim to cultivating supportive and progressive Caribbean neighborhoods free of violence, oppression, and discrimination. CEP’s intersectional organizing fosters solidarity, builds coalitions, develops community partnerships, and conducts legislative activism to advance LGBTQ+ rights in New York State. As a Black and Brown immigrant-led social justice and human rights organization, CEP’s liberation movement educates, inspires, uplifts, and celebrates Afro and Indo-Caribbean, queer and trans non-religious, Muslim, Hindu and Christian, documented and undocumented members of the Caribbean diaspora of all generations, all categories of ability, and all HIV statuses.

The Queens Museum is dedicated to presenting the highest quality visual arts and educational programming for people in the New York metropolitan area, and particularly for the residents of Queens — a uniquely diverse, ethnic, cultural, and international community. The Queens Museum presents artistic and educational programs and exhibitions that directly relate to the contemporary urban life of its constituents, while maintaining the highest standards of professional, intellectual, and ethical responsibility.

Photoville is a New York-based non-profit organization that works to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of photography for all. Founded in 2011 in Brooklyn, NY, Photoville was built on the principles of addressing cultural equity and inclusion, which we are always striving for, by ensuring that the artists we exhibit are diverse in gender, class, and race. In pursuit of its mission, Photoville produces an annual, city-wide open air photography festival in New York City, a wide range of free educational community initiatives, and a nationwide program of public art exhibitions. By activating public spaces, amplifying visual storytellers, and creating unique and highly innovative exhibition and programming environments, we join the cause of nurturing a new lens of representation. Through creative partnerships with festivals, city agencies, and other nonprofit organizations, Photoville offers visual storytellers, educators, and students financial support, mentorship, and promotional & production resources, on a range of exhibition opportunities.

Presenters and partners

To learn more about the Caribbean Equality Project & for regular updates on our work connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @CaribbeanEqualityProject, and Twitter at @CaribEquality.