FROM THE MARGINS, WE ASCEND: Murjoni Merriweather and Kleaver Cruz in Conversation

FROM THE MARGINS, WE ASCEND: Murjoni Merriweather and Kleaver Cruz in Conversation

Saturday, June 7th, 2025 at 2pm

Moderated by Jessica Lynne

FREE! And Open to the Public

From the Margins, We Ascend. Murjoni Merriweather and Kleaver Cruz delve into their respective creative journeys and motivations to becoming artists. Moderated by writer and art critic Jessica Lynne.

Photo Credit: Kleaver Cruz, Cow Kid, 2024, Mixed media collage on acid-free watercolor paper. Courtesy of the artist.

Murjoni Merriweather

Sculptor, Murjoni Merriweather grew up in Temple Hills, Maryland. During her
time there, she fell in love with art at the age of 8 learning how to draw from trial and
error and art kits her parents would give her. After dabbling in photography, drawing,
painting and graphic design, Murjoni tried out ceramics by the time she was in 8th grade
where her heart grew whole. While feeling so connected to clay, she started making
work that reflected the black experience.

In 2018 Murjoni graduated from The Maryland Institute College of Art with her BFA in Ceramics and concentration in Film/video. During this time, she explored celebrating blackness through figurative forms. Murjoni has been able to expand her knowledge and experiment at places like Creative Alliance (Baltimore, 2019-2022), Fountainhead Residency (Miami, 2021) and The ALMA | LEWIS Residency (PA, 2022) in ways that talk about emotion through the clay itself. She has shown in institutions like Rubell Museum DC (2023), Baltimore Museum of Art (2023), St. Louis Art Museum (2023), The Walters Museum (2023), Jeffery Deitch LA (2021), and many more.

Murjoni currently resides in Baltimore Maryland with her cat, Kiva, where she continues to aim towards inspiring and celebrating black culture in ways that make us feel seen.

Kleaver Cruz

A lover of words and their meanings across languages, Kleaver Cruz (they/them) was born and raised in Uptown, NYC with their twin and small Dominican family. Kleaver is a writer, educator  and artist that is deeply interested in the crevices of archives and history. Those dusty spots that get less light and care but are brilliant all the same. Their work is the marriage between curiosity of what has come before and the creative imagining of what can be; there’s an insistence on creating mirrors and clearing up the ones already there.

They have presented and conducted work across the African Diaspora and continent in places like Brazil, South Africa and The Netherlands, among other countries. Kleaver is the Facilitator of The Black Joy Project, a digital and real-world affirmation that Black joy is resistance that began in 2015.  Kleaver is a 2024 nominee for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Debut Author. They are the author of The Black Joy Project: A Literary and Visual Love Letter to How We Thrive. (Mariner Books/HarperCollins).

Kleaver believes in the power of words to write the stories that did not exist when they needed them the most.

Jessica Lynne

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The Believer, Frieze, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Oxford American, where she is a contributing editor. She is the recipient of a 2020 Research and Development award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, a 2020 Arts Writer Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the inaugural Beverley Art Writers Travel Grant awarded in 2022 by the American Australian Association. Her writing has been supported by Art Omi, Tin House, and The Carolyn Moore Writers House.

Jessica holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught writing and lectured at institutions such as Colorado College, Northwestern University, The New School, and Yale School of Art. She is currently an associate editor at Momus and host of the limited series podcast, Harlem is Everywhere.