05/28/2026
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
On View: June 12 through July 17, 2026
Hope is a Discipline begins with a question that lingers—what does it mean to keep going, to keep imagining, when the evidence around you suggests otherwise? Hope, here, is not presented as belief, but as a kind of behavior, something learned, repeated, carried. In the thinking of Mariame Kaba, it is a discipline, which is to say, a practice shaped as much by doubt as by faith.
The artists gathered in this exhibition understand that Black life has always existed in this tension between what is and what might be. Their work moves through love and resistance, memory and care, not as separate ideas but as overlapping conditions. There are moments of joy that feel deliberate, almost insistent. There are gestures that hold grief without trying to resolve it. And there are ways of being together—quiet, sometimes provisional—that suggest something like a future, even if it remains unnamed.
Hope Is a Discipline brings together Black artists of all identities whose work confronts the conditions we are living under while reaching toward something more free and whole.
Co-curated by Josie Pickens and Tay Butler, the exhibition centers care, resistance, and imagination as ways we move toward liberation and remain in relationship with one another.
The exhibition takes its title from the work of visionary abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba, who reminds us that hope is not passive—it’s something we choose and build together, especially in the face of ongoing harm.
Featuring work by Li(sa E.) Harris, Lovie Olivia, Josie Pickens, Tay Butler, Mich Stevenson, and Zsavon Butler, the exhibition spans visual art, sound, and performance.
JOIN US FOR THE OPENING RECEPTION | JUNE 12 | 6PM - 8PM
More at www.thecollective.org
