For Freedoms Congress

Breaking Point is a series of live recorded public conversations at the REACH—the new extension campus of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts— that unpacks the present moment of dramatic U.S. demographic and cultural transformation by asserting that a new plurality is not a counternarrative, but the story of our times. The inaugural conversation will feature family, pairing two artists with their artist-parent to discuss the trajectories of their work grounded in their family’s relationship with activism and social change. Kennedy Center’s Marc Bamuthi Joseph will link this intergenerational conversation between guests Hank Willis Thomas, acclaimed conceptual artist and co-founder of For Freedoms; Deborah Willis, photographer, researcher and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts; Jamaica Heoli Osorio, poet-activist and scholar of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Māno; and, Jonathan Osorio, a singer-songwriter and Dean of Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge. Pulling forward the notion that the family is our first network, this conversation asks: how can we learn from and teach liberation to those in our community. How are these lessons carried beyond the kitchen table and into the world? Join us as these powerhouse families offer their unique, cross-cultural experience of change led by creativity and heritage.

The Breaking Point series is presented by and will be live-streamed via the Kennedy Center and ArtChangeUS channels. Interactive conversations will engage the audience and featured guests through in-person and virtual Q&A. A recording of each event will be collaboratively produced by the Kennedy Center and ArtChangeUS as a Podcast collection hosted by the Kennedy Center.