Lukaza Branfman Verissimo:
Title

we webs rooted in flight
wings large enough to be bulletin boards
banners becoming kites
mutual aid text threads as lube for community care
care packages as beautiful as clouds before the sun sets
rage yelling the poems of today
soaring and soaring as survival
survival as abolition
loving as a net, mesh, basket, vessel
resting because Black rest is todays news
and making our own news that doesn't cause trauma but rather shares our flight stories
nuanced gusts of wind powerful enough to free them all
blowing out candles, burning it all down

(an excerpt from F.L.I.G.H.T. S.C.H.O.O.L., by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo. Delivered as an artist talk at the University of New Mexico, NM)

River Valley Arts Collective is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo at the Al Held Foundation, on view from September 5 through October 18, 2026. The presentation includes a series of handmade cotton paper works, to be exhibited for the first time. The exhibition also includes a series of photographs Branfman-Verissimo made in collaboration with the artist Nicholas Valdes.

In 2023, Branfman-Verissimo created a series of handmade paper works while in residence at the Women's Studio Workshop (WSW) in Rosendale, NY. Dedicated to the production of handmade papers since 1979, WSW’s papermaking studio facilitated the large-scale sheet formation process that involves cooking and processing fibers and foraged plant matter into pulp that then becomes the basis for the paper sheets. Evident in the compositions are papermaking techniques such as double couching, where wet sheets are layered with felt on both sides to prevent sticking; inclusions, where a second layer of pulp is embedded directly into the base layer of wet pulp; and blowouts, flaws that happen when air gets trapped or water forces a hole through the wet sheet during paper’s formation. The artist strategically integrates these methods within a vast color palette of asymmetric grids and bold dissecting lines that rush, ripple and run through Branfman-Verissimo’s writing and poetry.

The compositions’ visual and textual forms extend the visual plane to propose an embodiment of an aesthetic resistance. Emitting a vocabulary of webs, nets, kites, quilts, banners and the appearance of a broken chainlink fence, the series takes inspiration from the concept of poetic narratives of Black fugitivity articulated by the cultural theorist, poet, and scholar Fred Moten. Moten conceptualizes a break, as an improvisational, ruptural space, and a collective performance of survival and future-making. The artist registers this dissonant operation of disruption and evasion in the series in order to carve out a new, spatial-temporal opening. The presentation takes the form of a project, a practice, and a set of illocutionary strategies that seek an unofficiated, underground fellowship.

The title of the works give indication of the operations that declare unsanctioned possibilities of being and gathering such as Survival, sky, cruising, labor; We fly free we and F.L.I.G.H.T. – an acronym that stands for Flying, Lift Off, Intuition, Generous, Hugging, Trans Soaring. F.L.I.G.H.T. S.C.H.O.O.L., is an ongoing body of work and inquiry that the artist developed as a Frederick Hammersley Visiting Artist Fellow at the University of New Mexico. While residing in Albuquerque, they collaborated on a series with the artist Nicholas Valdes to produce multiexposed photographic images that merge Branfman-Verissimo’s paper rendered topologies with documented sites and geographies of New Mexico.

In keeping with the multivalent and multiauthored space, the installation itself assumes a horizontal logic. The large handmade paper works are displayed off the wall, laid down on tables. This exhibition strategy pays homage to the process of learning and foregrounds ways in which being "in study" of material, living, and liberatory future making is a practice and act key in F.L.I.G.H.T. S.C.H.O.O.L. Collectively, the handmade paper works and photographs build on the artist’s multi-positionality and weaving of form and practice. Art historically, this metaphysical webbing assumed a visual grid that has been said to hold the potential to stretch infinitely outward while autonomously mapping inward to meet its own physical boundaries. Branfman-Verissimo’s vision for an active, social and improvisational practice extends and assembles that radical webbing as expressed in their own words, “A practitioner of the web, I am called to that form because that’s the way it's always been, that's the way I root, the form that holds our multitudes and sets us free.”

LUKAZA BRANFMAN-VERISSIMO is an artist, abolitionist, educator, storyteller and person of multitudes who lives and works on the unceded lands of the Schaghticoke, Mohican and Munsee Lenape people (also known as the Hudson Valley, NY). Through a practice based in the printed multiple, community-based work, performance and installation building, they invite the viewer to recall and share their own lived narratives, offering power and weight to the creation of a larger dialogue around the telling of Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, People of color’s stories. Branfman-Verissimo's work has been included in exhibitions and performances at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, California African American Museum, MOCA Cleveland, Smith College Art Museum, Konsthall C, San Francisco Arts Commission, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and L’Internationale Online, amongst others. They had solo shows at September Gallery, Amherst College, Deli Gallery, Roll Up Projects, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Printed Matter Inc. Their artist books and printed editions have been published by Cripple, Endless Editions, Childish Books, Ghost Proposal,

Press Press, Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry, Printed Matter Inc and Wendy’s Subway. Their work has most recently been supported by a Wynn Newhouse Award, Mid-Hudson Valley Arts Council and Frederick Hammersley Visiting Artist Fellowship. Lukaza got their BFA at California College of the Arts and MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. They facilitate spaces of learning and exchange at the School for Poetic Computation and Bard College.

Organized by Olga Dekalo in partnership with the Al Held Foundation. Over the past six years, River Valley Arts Collective has presented exhibitions in Held’s former drawing studio, outdoor installations on the foundation's grounds and, more recently, performances in Held’s painting studio.

The Al Held Foundation premises are historic and therefore do not fully conform to ADA accessibility guidelines. The exhibition is not wheelchair accessible but some accommodations can be made to assist visitors with accessibility needs. Please contact us ahead of your visit if you require accessibility. Dogs and other pets are not permitted on the premises, even if left in cars. Licensed service animals are permitted with prior approval. A public all gender bathroom is available. To ensure equitable access, masks will be provided and required to be worn in all interior spaces. Thank you for keeping the artist and our at risk community members safe.