Flyer courtesy Juice House
If These Houses Could Sing
About
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) and Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy (HFTC) present the virtual release of the program, If These Houses Could Sing, a response to Where We Find Ourselves, the solo exhibition by Satchel Lee at the Row House Galleries in Freedmen’s Town. The program convened sound artist Mo Nikole of blkwomanmusiq and curator Amarie Gipson of The Reading Room to expand the exhibition’s meditation on memory, place, and Black cultural survival through the perspectives of Black women.
Mo introduces If These Houses Could Sing, a listening altar anchored in the sonic memory of Freedmen’s Town. The work combines archival recordings, speeches, and music by Black women to create a sacred environment where sound carries remembrance, resistance, grief, and joy across generations. Amarie contributes This House is Mine, a meditative essay that extends the themes of the exhibition and reflects on how literature and history safeguard collective memory.
Together they shape a collective experience of sound and text, where listening and reading become practices of remembrance and reclamation. Their dialogue resonates with Satchel Lee’s artistic approach of reconstructing Freedmen’s Town through film, photography, and architectural models. The program affirms that the archive, whether carried in sound story or text, remains a vessel for care, belonging and cultural continuity.
This activation will be made available to the public through Satchel Lee’s online platform as well as CAMH’s YouTube channel. A link will be sent out to those who RSVP via Eventbrite. The virtual program will allow audiences in Houston and beyond to encounter Houston’s Freedmen’s Town as a living space where Black memory continues to guide the present and future.
Organizers
If These Houses Could Sing is organized by Amarie Gipson, Mo Nikole, and Satchel Lee in partnership with Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and Houston Freedmen's Town Conservancy.
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