02/28/2026
JOIN US THIS SAT!
Artist Talk + Closing Reception, 2pm, Saturday, February 28, with Guest Speaker, Michelle Burdex, Program Coordinator, Greenwood Cultural Center, who will reflect on how she takes permission to breathe within cultural leadership and everyday life.
MEET ARTIST GAY PASLEY: Gay Pasley is a writer, photographer, and actor whose work explores how history and inheritance live in the body. Born in Antigua and raised in North Tulsa, she moves between archive and embodiment, examining estrangement, Black maternal legacy, and survival across generations. Through self-portraiture and performance, she reconsiders the images and narratives that shape memory and belonging.
She is the recipient of the Tulsa Paragon Award for her advocacy with victims of sexual assault and the Southwest Everett Literary Award for her hybrid memoir My Story Begins in Water. Her work resists easy resolution, returning to questions of breath, lineage, and the cost of survival.
Pasley is also a registered nurse of more than three decades, practicing across the full arc of life. She has held newborns still wet with first breath and clasped hands when the last breath left, guiding families through moments that divide before from after. That lived proximity to beginnings and endings grounds her artistic practice, where the body is not metaphor but witness.
The Voyage of the Venus Desable: From Africa to Antigua to America is available for acquisition. Pricing and purchase inquiries may be directed to the gallery. This work stands as both visual narrative and historical reclamation — an opportunity for collectors to steward a living dialogue between migration, memory, and breath.
“Permission to Breathe: A Black Woman’s Perspective on Living Life Unapologetically”
Curated by Artists Ebony Iman Dallas + Elizabeth Feather Henley + Jaiden Jiji McClellan
ARTIST TALK + CLOSING RECEPTION: 2pm, Sat, Feb 28
Gallery hours:
TH 6–8pm
FR 5–8pm
SA 12–5pm
• BY APPT
Contact: Nicole Finley, Director .finley – Positive Space Tulsa
[email protected]
