A Gathering of the Tribes, selection of archival material

Chavisa Woods: My name is Chavisa Woods, and I am currently the Executive Director of A Gathering of the Tribes.

Narrator: The poet and thinker Steve Cannon founded A Gathering of the Tribes in 1991.

Chavisa Woods: The mission of A Gathering of the Tribes, Steve always said, Tribes meant to him people from different groups coming together for a greater purpose. So it was a place where all different types of marginalized artists and authors came together in order to strengthen our standing, and to make sure that we did get represented. I think it’s a place for LGBTQ artists, artists of color, immigrant artists, Native American artists, Indigenous artists, and artists from poor and working class backgrounds.

Narrator: Tribes was housed in Cannon’s apartment in the East Village. It operated as a magazine, a salon, and a gallery—flyers hanging around this space show the vast range of artists whose work appeared there. One of its most striking features was a wall painted by the artist David Hammons, which framed the couch where Cannon could usually be found directing the action in the space.

Chavisa Woods: The wall to me looks like David Hammons has created wallpaper, but it’s painted on. So it’s these beautiful sort of golden waves that go vertically up and down the full length of the wall. And they look like they’re made with gold leaf.

And at the top it looks like chicken wire, and the part that would be spikes is made of human hair. So then the wall becomes something else. It becomes a security fence, but of course it’s not, because it’s also . . . there’s a conflict there because it’s so beautiful. Because it’s red and gold, and then the human hair gives it this sort of really gritty feel because the hair, of course, has been cut off and is old and dry.

Narrator: A Gathering of the Tribes has operated out of two different apartments in New York. In 2013, Cannon was evicted from the organization’s first home.

Chavisa Woods: Steve, when he was evicted, decided to take the wall with him, which is a pretty brassy move, to tell the landlord, okay, I’ll move out but I’m taking a wall with me. [laughs]