Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod

The Crenshaw Dairy Mart (CDM) is thrilled to announce its forthcoming exhibition, Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod, as part the Getty Pacific Standard Time (PST) Science and Art Collide initiative. In 2021, CDM began prototyping and building abolitionist pods - autonomously irrigated, solar-powered gardens within modular geodesic domes - with communities impacted by food insecurity, housing insecurity, and the prison industrial complex. Offered alongside workshops on food justice, art, and healing justice, CDM's abolitionist pod project reimagines community care and models how art, architecture, and science can collectively address systemic issues. CDM’s programming will accompany an exhibition about the abolitionist pod project and its evolution across Los Angeles County. Events will include health and wellness workshops using herbs and flowers, organic gardening and micro-farming workshops, a community farmers market, and a Black farmers’ meet-ups.

The exhibition, Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod, is organized as a survey and studio of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart artist collective’s ongoing research for the abolitionist pod, with illustrations, archival documentation, architectural renderings, sketches, and drawings of the collective’s many configurations of the geodesic structure during its prototype phases as they engage with a history of collectives and cooperatives at the interstices of food justice, land sovereignty, and the Black Liberation Movement. The exhibition falls in conjunction with the artist collective’s year of programmed study and research for the abolitionist pod, entitled Imagination Year, following suit their collective practice of prototyping an abolitionist imagination collating the spiritual-historical-political discourse of the abolitionist pod program, through prayer and somatic-embodiment practices, as it ties to contemporary imaginings of economic autonomy, community resilience, and collective agency for oppressed communities bound to land usage and its reparations. These ruminations and points of departure for the Crenshaw Dairy Mart collective each intersect with the convening of over 500 Black nationalists who sought the creation of a sovereign nation-state, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). The RNA’s demand for financial restitution and reparations of land, is most notably recognized under the moniker “Free the Land! Free the People!” The exhibition coincides with a concurrent resource and larger archive in indexing the networked Black farmers across Los Angeles county with whom CDM has collaborated with on the abolitionist pod, traversing contemporary movements towards alternative permacultures, which include localized, small-scale farming and micro-farming as models for community care, community safety, and economic autonomy within the larger contemporary abolitionist movement.