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Clareese Hill: The Black Boston Dream Oracle
September 18 @ 8:00 am – October 28 @ 5:00 pm
Clareese Hill’s The Black Boston Dream Oracle is a speculative reimagining of The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book written by Chloe Russel, a 19th-century Black woman from Massachusetts. By blending historical wisdom with future-focused fabulations, the Black Boston Dream Oracle will provide a unique space for reflection, healing, and imagining new possibilities for liberation and collective well-being through early Black feminist thought. The Oracle will be presented as an Extended Reality (XR) experience available on the Hoverlay application, accompanied by a web-based research document designed for educational purposes.
This project is part of Hidden Histories, a series of four public art activations produced as part of the Un-Monument initiative of the City of Boston, viewable September 1 through October 28. This project can be viewed virtually via the Hoverlay augmented reality application at 3 separate locations on Beacon Hill: 8 Smith Court, 65 Anderson Street and 27 Myrtle street. On site public signage will provide a Qr code and instructions to download the app and access the exhibition.
Dr. Clareese Hill is a practice-based researcher. She explores the validity of the word “identity” through her perspective as an Afro-Caribbean American woman and her societal role projected on her to perform as a Black feminist academic. Dr. Hill has performed lectures at The Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths University of London, University of Sussex, CUNY Graduate Center, The Chicago Art Department, and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn. She was also a 2020 Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future fellow (Phase One). Dr.Hill has published peer-reviewed academic essays in THEOREM Journal, Architecture, and Culture Journal, and has an upcoming article in Antennae, The Journal of Nature and Culture.
To support public access to Hidden Histories, Emerson Contemporary continues to build on its multi-year collaboration and partnership with Hoverlay, a Boston-based augmented reality platform where users can compose and publish immersive content. Hoverlay enables any storyteller to utilize AR to transform how they tell their stories by placing virtual story objects out in the world to be accessed by visitors’ smartphones. Public signage on Beacon Hill, the T and in the Common will provide a Qr code and instructions to download the app and access the exhibition.
This project is funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s Un-monument initiative, supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for The Visual Arts.
