INTERVIEW
BYTE SIZED BLESSINGS
The Interview: Emerald Carter-The Miracle of the Neighbor / January 7, 2024
INTERVIEW
OUR STREETS, OUR STORIES
Emerald Carter is interviewed by Taina Evans at Boys and Girls High School in Bed-Stuy on March 8th, 2016.
"CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY" by Walt Whitman | #Whitman200 at Brooklyn Public Library, 2019
Brooklyn Public Library celebrated the bicentennial of Walt Whitman's birthday with a full recitation of "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" featuring Brooklynites reading Whitman's iconic words aloud in locations all across the borough he loved, and in our libraries. Emerald Carter was reader #4.
COLLABORATION
BETWEEN THE DOOR AND THE STREETS: A Performance Initiated by Suzanne Lacy
On Saturday, October 19, 2013, Creative Time and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum presented “Between the Door and the Street,” a major work by the internationally celebrated artist Suzanne Lacy. Emerald Carter was one of 400 women and a few men—all selected to represent a cross-section of ages, backgrounds, and perspectives—who gathered on the stoops along Park Place, a residential block in Brooklyn, where they engaged in unscripted conversations about a variety of issues related to gender politics today. Thousands of members of the public came out to wander among the groups, listen to what they were saying, and form their own opinions.
COLLABORATION
PAINTING
BLACK HOUSE W/ GLITTER
In “Black House w/ Glitter,” painted live at the Queens Museum, Emerald formed three houses using basic square, rectangle, and triangle shapes. Growing from small to big, from blue and small, red, medium, and on fire, to large, black and painted with glitter. These shapes are painted on a green background with blue clouds made of smoke and/or vapor. This painting is political in that the smaller houses represent the bipartisan democratic system which is not serving the American people. The larger black house, painted over the red and blue smaller ones, is a testament to what’s possible. The glitter adds spontaneity and texture.
PAINTING
THIRD EYE LEADING THE BLIND
Emerald’s abstract paintings honor her ancestors’ resilience through an afrofuturist lens. With aims to depict a world torn between strife and possibility, Emerald overlays remembered images with emotional gestures that conjure a journey towards wholeness.
For instance, in “Third Eye Leading the Blind,” a forty ounce bottle of malt liquor is growing stalks of cotton out of its narrow mouth. A single red eye sits where the branding should be, amidst a sea of white and brown. Both the cotton and the 40oz represent images that have been bastardized and condensed as the only Black representations: enslaved or menace to society. With “Third Eye Leading the Blind,” Emerald reimagines what is possible if they grow together.