Invisible Architectures is a project launched by Ada Pinkston and Kalima Young for Towson University’s Co-Lab.

Invisible Architectures Project at TU

a multi-year, interdisciplinary container designed to create avenues for projects and programs that re-inscribe the voices of Black, Brown, Indigenous and immigrant populations in the narrative of Towson University’s origin story.  It also aims to re-visibilize the place-based strategies and cultural frictions that have contributed to Towson University’s growth and development as an anchor institution in Baltimore.

Overview

Starting in 2021, each year, we focused on a different framework for exploring Invisible Architectures.

Year 1 Place. 2021 – 2022. Critical Confabulations at Historic East Towson

Year 2 Discipline. 2022 – 2023. Invisible Architectures: Archival Silent NOISE Conference

Year 3 Scholarship. 2023 – 2024. Invisible Architectures Festival

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More about Us

Ada Pinkston, MFA Department of Art + Design, Art History, Art Education

Ada Pinkston is an artist, educator, and cultural organizer living and working in Baltimore, MD, where she is a lecturer in Art Education at Towson University. Her work explores the intersection of imagined histories and sociopolitical realities on our bodies using performance, digital media, and mixed-media sculptures and installations. She is currently a Monument Lab transnational Fellow facilitated by Goethe Institute and part of the inaugural cohort of artists participating in LACMA x Snap AR Monument Project.

Kalima Young, PhD Department of Electronic Media and Film

Dr. Kalima Young is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic Media and Film at Towson University. Her research explores the impact of race and gender-based trauma on Black identity and Black cultural production. A Baltimore native, videographer, and activist, Dr. Young served on the leadership team for FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture’s Monument Quilt Project from 2014-2019. She is also a member of Rooted, a Black LGBTQ healing collective.

Her new manuscript, Mediated Misogynoir: The Erasure of Black Women and Girls’ Pain the Public Imagination was released by Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Books in Summer 2022.