Join us Sunday, April 14, 1pm at TAM Filament: TAM Cinema Christopher Harris: God Bless the Child (Artist in attendance, live multimedia presentation, approx 75 min) Free or suggested donation [cid:image002.png@01DA8B56.E1E042B0] still courtesy of Christopher Harris from God Bless the Child TAM welcomes filmmaker and artist Christopher Harris for "God Bless the Child," a multi-media presentation centered around an upcoming autobiographical film and art project which draws directly from his infancy and experience as a foster child. Combining photos, records, and other materials from his personal archives with 16mm film footage he recently shot in Senegal, Harris situates "the carcerality of the social welfare state and child services in relation to Black childhood in the US" within the broader context of the transatlantic slave trade and the French Catholic Church's colonization of West Africa and the Americas. His hometown of St. Louis, MO and Saint-Louis, Senegal are presented as fraternal colonized twin cities (description courtesy Microscope Gallery). Full event description and artist bio: TAM welcomes filmmaker and artist Christopher Harris for "God Bless the Child," a multi-media presentation centered around an upcoming film and art project. In "God Bless the Child," the artist's first autobiographical work, Harris draws directly from his infancy and experience as a foster child. Combining photos, records, and other materials from his personal archives with 16mm film footage he recently shot in Senegal, Harris situates "the carcerality of the social welfare state and child services in relation to Black childhood in the US" within the broader context of the transatlantic slave trade and the French Catholic Church's colonization of West Africa and the Americas. His hometown of St. Louis, MO and Saint-Louis, Senegal are presented as fraternal colonized twin cities. Harris says: "I was born on Easter Sunday to Mary Ellen Harris, a Catholic woman who gave me the Greek derived name Christopher, which means "bearing Christ." I was still a newborn when the Catholic Charities Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO became my legal guardian. I lived in a foster home for the first 16 years of my life, spending 8th grade in a Catholic boarding school and junior and senior year of high school in a Catholic group home for boys run by Jesuit priests. In between the foster home and the group home, I spent a few nights in juvenile detention because I had nowhere else to go." The archival materials - which include, among many others, records about Harris from the Archdiocese of St. Louis, photos of his birth and foster mothers, and a newspaper profile of him as a child available for adoption placed just above an ad for Lane Bryant shoes and other products - will eventually be edited into an experimental essay film along with additional footage Harris will soon be shooting in his hometown and in Paris (description courtesy Microscope Gallery). Ellen Ito Curator of Special Projects Collections Manager Pronouns: she, her, hers TACOMA ART MUSEUM 1701 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98402 T: 253-272-4258 x3047 TacomaArtMuseum.org<http://www.tacomaartmuseum.org/> Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/TacomaArtMuseum>, Instagram<http://instagram.com/tacomaartmuseum>, and Twitter<https://twitter.com/TacomaArtMuseum> [cid:image001.png@01DA8B53.7D3AE890]