Staying Power
Staying Power is a print and online publishing platform dedicated to amplifying a people's history of public housing. The project uses visual and archival strategies to expand and transform narratives about public housing, bridging the distance between stories that are widely told about public housing and the lived experiences of residents.
In February 2022, Staying Power celebrated the launch of it's first zine publication which coalesces resident interviews and research conducted between 2019-2021. Zine content can also be explored online at stayingpower.zone.
Volume I of Staying Power was possible with support from The Laundromat Project's 2019 and 2020 Create Change Artist-in-Residence program, FABnyc, and the 2021 Pioneer Works Technology Residency.
Selected Press/Writing
ZEKE Magazine, Fall 2021 Issue
The Laundromat Project, Staying Power: Reframing the Narrative of Public Housing, Summer 2021
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project is a research and digital media collective documenting displacement and crafting tools for resistance in solidarity with gentrifying communities.
Ariana is a founding member of AEMP's New York City chapter and helped produce Black Exodus (pictured left), a multi-platform publication that documents the displacement and resistance of Black San Franciscans through oral histories and community stories.
Selected Press/Writing
Build your World: Tech Tools for Community Action
Developed and facilitated curriculum for Eyebeam's 2021 Digital Design Day Camp, an intensive, multi-week, youth arts and technology program for NYC high school students.
The course, Visual Activism: Using Data to Shape Change, invited students to explore the work of artists and technologists who creatively use data to surface hidden histories and build community power. Participants explored different approaches to data collection and visualization and created their own graphs and diagrams using ready-at-hand data.
Check out the Visual Activism syllabus and facilitator deck.
Voces de Fillmore
This documentary traces the memories and experiences of families living on one block in South Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood that is affectionately known by long time residents as Southside or Los Sures. In the past decade, Southside’s Latinx and working class population has steadily decreased from seventy to forty-five percent, in part due to gentrification in New York City. In this film, Puerto Rican families who have lived and raised children in Los Sures for several decades talk about their quest to preserve a sense of community in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
Directors: Ariana Allensworth, Teresa Basilio, Regina Eaton
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
2015, 19 minutes
Past Presence
Inspired by the ways the past is always present, this exhibition brought together new and recent work by Bay Area-based artists Indira Allegra and Christopher R. Martin. Both artists use textile to materially and conceptually examine themes of Black grief and trauma memory.
Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland
September 8-29, 2017
This exhibition was produced as part of Pro Arts Gallery's 2x2 Curator-in-Residence program.
Selected Press/Writing
Rosa Mexicano
Rosa Mexicano is an experimental publication and research project that explores the visual and symbolic multiplicities of the color pink in Mexico City.
The project focuses on the social construction of pink in three spheres of Mexico City: the government's 2015 CDMX rebranding project, women's only public transportation, and feminist artist's place-based organizing against street harassment.
This project was supported in part by participation in UC Berkeley's Andrew Mellon Global Urban Humanities Mexico City Studio.