Closing Party for Benny Andrews: Trouble

The Andrews-Humphrey Family Foundation (AHFF) was established in 2005 by artists Benny Andrews and Nene Humphrey. The Foundation builds knowledge and fosters understanding around the life and work of Benny Andrews. It upholds Andrews’s commitment to education, social justice and the project of creating a fuller, more accurate historical canon that acknowledges the contributions of women and people of color to the arts. The Foundation oversees the Benny Andrews Estate: the artists’ personal archive and an extensive collection of his artworks located in his former studio in Brooklyn, NY. The AHFF’s mission is to provide educational programming on Andrews’s life and work, including online resources, student outreach, access for academic researchers, and an artist fellowship through MacDowell.

Tongo Eisen-Martin was born in San Francisco on May 20, 1980. He received a BA and MA in African American studies from Columbia University. Eisen-Martin is the author of Blood on the Fog (City Lights Publishers, 2021), listed among the Best Poetry of 2021 by The New York Times; Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Publishers, 2017), which received the California Book Award and an American Book Award; and Someone’s Dead Already (Bootstrap Press, 2015).

A poet, movement worker, and educator, Eisen-Martin’s latest curriculum on the extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the United States. From 2021–2024, Eisen-Martin served as the eighth poet laureate of San Francisco. In 2024, he received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. He is currently based in Detroit.

Nnaemeka Ekwelum is a Black Studies researcher, artist, curator, and educator from Boston, MA (now living in Chicago, IL). His scholarly and creative work explore how friendship and collaborative art making help to amplify social and cultural narratives that care-fully respond to the political conditions of Black life globally. Under the purview of his art platform, Love Aboundz, Nnaemeka engages in the politics of care work and political education, with a critical focus on universal themes of grief, love, and hope. Since 2018, he has designed and curated public works, exhibitions, and workshops at historic and notable institutions such as Chicago’s South Side Community Arts Center and San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

+ Read more

As Co-Curator and Director of Art & Engagement for AfroDisco Social Hour, Nnaemeka builds and curates immersive art installations, exhibitions, and programs/events that advance ADSH’s mission and foster safe and purpose-filled spaces/experiences that prioritize and promote the transformative possibilities of Black gathering. He is a PhD candidate in Black Studies at Northwestern University, with an Ed.M. in Arts and Education (Harvard University) and a B.A. in Comparative Ethnic Studies (Columbia University).

Founded by Alexandria Eregbu and Nnaemeka Ekwelum, AfroDisco Social Hour (ADSH) is a series of thoughtfully-curated events and programs that reimagine the intimacy of social spaces and hospitality venues to cultivate creativity, collaborative friendship, and community building amongst people of diverse cultural backgrounds, gender expressions, sexual identities, and other notable markers of difference.

Inspired by the political and aesthetic offerings of the Disco movement of the 1970s, ADSH is motivated by our shared belief in the transformative power of love and the active use of love and critical hope as a reliable response to the social and political conditions of our time. Our curatorial approach is intentionally designed to foster and facilitate meaningful exchanges that are responsive to the feedback, challenges, and desires of Chicago’s Black diaspora.

+ Read more

Through art, music, fashion, and culinary dining experiences, ADSH creates unique and dynamic opportunities for our guests and friends to ‘party with purpose,’ centering our commitment to forum-building through pleasure and play, scholarly discourse, and resource/skill-sharing.

Alexandria Eregbu is a creative anthropologist dedicated to amplifying diverse perspectives through art and music. As Co-Curator and Director of Music & Partnerships for AfroDisco Social Hour, she creates immersive experiences that celebrate heritage, community, and culture. Under her DJ moniker, FINDING IJEOMA, she blends Afrobeats, house, jazz, disco, and more to honor Black musical traditions and storytelling. Alexandria has performed alongside artists like Grammy-nominated Uncle Waffles, Ibibio Sound Machine, Noname, and Chicago house legends DJ Lady D and Duane Powell. Her performance work engages dreams, installation, digital archives and the living word to invoke love, liberation, and ancestral memory.

+ Read more

She holds a Master of Arts degree in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)— a hybrid program for scholars who wish to investigate practices of looking and the impact, productions and circulation of visual images. Through AfroDisco Social Hour, she fosters inclusive spaces where art, music, and movement inspire deeper connections.

For Chef Imani Graham, cooking has always been about feeling. It started when he was a young boy, watching his grandmother and parents create amazing meals that they shared as a family - and how they interacted with one another and the feeling that he took away from their time together. Mentionables Eats is built around this same feeling, creating sensational food and a sense of shared connection; it is also now Graham’s sole focus after many years working in a corporate setting. He wants people to experience affordable, luxurious food, whether it's in a casual weeknight setting or special celebratory event, alone or with others.

Located in Milwaukee and home to an internationally recognized collection of poetry and printed matter, Woodland Pattern is a nonprofit gallery, book center, and performance space where poets and artists have found support for their practices since 1979.