Imagining Our Future

Cici Osias

Brooklyn

At the End of the World, there Will Always Be Us

2022

Digital Archival Inkjet Print

24″ x 36″ each

Artist Statement:

Cici Osias is a photographer, printmaker, and textile artist currently residing In Brooklyn, New York. Cici’s work in the visual arts draws influence from traditional Nigerian and Congolese art styles in order to make meaning of her own identity as a member of the Black diaspora. Her photography practice aims to capture the beauty of the quotidian, the marvel of the mundane, and centers themes of coexistence and belonging. All of her photos are shot on 35mm film to induce nostalgia (and because she loves a good surprise).

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

The story of Weeksville is one of autonomy, kinship, and connection to the land. At a time where the very earth upon which Black folks toiled was deemed off-limits, Weeksville served as a space where community was abundant and Blackness was celebrated. Just as in 1800s Weeksville, Black future means being able to find a home in the land around us, and reclaiming places once considered ‘not for us.’

As a member of Generation Z, I have grown up in the distinct position of knowing that in my lifetime I will face the decimation of the natural world around me. What does it mean to be autonomous in a burning world? When I imagine our future, it is hard to ignore the rising tides and warming globe. But nevertheless, we must continue to put community first; to lend ourselves to those in our presence. As people become the only thing certain about our environment, it is imperative that we tend to them the same way our ancestors once tended to the land we’ve made our own.

Shenaia Ramsey

Brooklyn

My Sister’s Keeper

2023

Inkjet Print

24″ x 36″

Artist Statement:

Born in Norristown, PA, and shaped by her younger adolescent years in Brooklyn, New York, Shenaia was immersed in a vibrant tapestry of Black arts and culture, igniting a lifelong passion for authentic, skillful expression across various mediums. In the year of 2020, amidst the Black Lives Matter movement, Shenaia was entrusted with a camera, marking the genesis of their photography journey. With an inherent penchant for documenting and a deep-seated desire to capture the essence of their surroundings, Shenaia focuses on preserving the narratives of the Black community, Black connections, and Black futurism through analog and digital poignant portraitures and documentative street photography. She’s forever Grateful for the multitude of inspirations that fuel her creativity. She endeavors to weave her own story through the lens, paying homage to those who came before while paving a path forward.

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

My Sister’s Keeper encapsulates the essence of sisterhood among young Black women, mirroring the spirit of solidarity and communal strength historically embodied in Weeksville. As we envision the future, this artwork evokes a narrative of unity and harmony within the Black community, envisioning a future where competition and animosity are replaced by mutual support and celebration of each other’s successes. Through the lens of sisterhood, we see a future where healing, nurturing, and the preservation of traditions are central to the flourishing of our Black family. Featuring this work at the Spring Benefit honors the legacy of Weeksville and contributes to the collective vision of a future defined by interconnectedness, resilience, and shared prosperity within our community lineage.

Traci Johnson

Brooklyn

The Power of the Sun, in the Palm of your Hand

2024

Yarn on cloth, faux fur

35″ x 28″

Artist Statement:

Traci Johnson (b. Brooklyn, NY) is a textile artist and sculptor. Their work explores mental health, art, and self-expression as a path to healing. A graduate of FIT with a Fine Arts/Art History background, Traci’s artistic journey is a vibrant tapestry of personal growth.

Their installations and textile creations serve as sanctuaries, offering solace and emotional exploration. Nature’s influence is evident, with organic forms reflecting humanity’s connection to the natural world. Bold colors and euphoria empower viewers to join this journey.

Traci’s dedication is shown not only in prolific exhibitions, but also in recognition: two grants from the prestigious FST Studio Projects Fund and a winter artist residency at FIT. Recent solo shows include the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance and Established Gallery, with group exhibitions at the Museum at FIT, Morgan Lehman Gallery and Canada Gallery. Their commitment to sharing art continues to touch hearts and minds

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

The Power of the Sun, in the palm of your hand with its circular form and figures merging into one, evokes a sense of unity and collective spirit that resonates with Weeksville’s legacy as a haven for Black freedom. The vibrant pastel hues and title hint at the dynamism and transformation we strive for in the future – a future where individuals from all walks of life transcend their differences and create a more unified society. This artwork is a hopeful vision, inspired by Weeksville’s past and looking towards a future brimming with possibility.

Jonelle Austin

Brooklyn

Passion’s Invocation

2024

Acrylic on matte polypropylene film

30″ x 35″

Artist Statement:

Jonelle Austin is a queer Guyanese born practicing artist based in Brooklyn,New York. Her work is fluid and surreal, encompassing forms of portraiture of those she holds close as well as her own figure. Her consideration is to give space to her ancestors and bring to limitless life our understandings of space to exist, reflect and play. Renditions of sacred ceremony and postures associated with Obeah spirituality inspire and drive formal elements of the work.

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

Passion’s Invocation is a representation of a going forward to the past. Meaning, while in creation, thoughts of returning to something as sacred as nurture and what that might look like in this current timeline of ours were on my mind. There are many disconnections that we see in the ways we go about interacting with our fellow humans on this physical plane. I feel there is much to learn from our ancestors and knowledge that has existed far long before our presence.

Modupe Alatise Odusote

Manhattan

As the Sun Comes Down

2023

Fabric, suede, acrylic, paint on wood

3′ x 3′

Artist Statement:

Modupe is an America-based Nigerian Artist, born and raised in Lagos, of the Yoruba ethnic tribe. Her works are influenced by her life experiences in Nigeria, United States, and South Africa. Modupe is a self-taught figurative artist, and her expressions are contemporary paintings on canvas, using acrylics, ink, print and fabric. Her techniques are multi-dimensional, with her favorite techniques leveraging painting knives, brushes and her fingertips.

Modupe uses bold images and colors, a heavy influence from her African heritage and her Yoruba culture which tends to be vibrant. As an artist, she aims for her works to speak authenticity, provide reflection and healing for self and compassion for others

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

As the Sun Comes Down expresses traveling towards a hopeful and promising time ahead. I imagine, aspire, and pray for the unlived days ahead to be a good future, even as fraught as the present might be. Always hoping for a peaceful future.

Deidra Demens

Brooklyn

Black History & Yoga

2016

Digital Inkjet Print

9×9 photos and 18x 22 images

Artist Statement:

Deidra Demens is a certified Iyengar Yoga instructor based in Brooklyn, NY. A graduate of DePaul University’s acclaimed theater school, Deidra brings her grounding in performing arts to her yoga practice and instruction with a fun yet thoughtful and comprehensive teaching style, and dynamic and engaging classes. Through demonstration and detailed guidance, she seeks to challenge and inspire her students, while empowering them to make their practice their own. Deidra is also known for her ongoing Black History x Yoga photo series, where she shares moving and inspiring Black stories and interprets each as a yoga asana. Through art and education, the series honors the legacy of Black History Black history by creatively expressing its essence through yoga, weaving together narratives of resilience, empowerment, and cultural heritage.

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.” – James Baldwin

My art project tells the stories of my ancestors. For most of my life many of these stories were kept from me. Their contributions to work, life, and society were not taught in my schools. Today, our society is beginning to learn more about Black History, and we as a people are beginning to learn more about our history, and culture, and our ancestors that paved the way for us. We also see younger generations learning about Black History. While we can draw inspiration from this and carry it forward in our purpose, we also face political pushback aimed at either removing Black history from schools or distorting it in ways that diminish its true essence. This project is important in imagining our future, because it not only teaches us about our past to arm us with the courage and confidence to move forward, but it also teaches us the importance of fighting and standing against the injustices that we suffered. By doing so, we ensure that future generations receive the education they need about their history to inspire their own futures.

Lehna Huie

Brooklyn

Water Spirit

2021

Fibers, windows, fabric, canvas, acrylic, ribbons, candelabra

~ 72″ x 56″

Artist Statement:

Lehna Huie is a multidisciplinary artist, mother and cultural worker of Jamaican heritage from New York City. Huie works in painting, installation and video on diaspora, memory and fragmentation – creating atmospheric portraits, documenting her lineage, varying in scale, medium and surface.

Huie weaves multimedia patchworks expressing vignettes of self, familial ancestry and global Black history – while in dialogue with notions of liberation, migration and decolonization. Lehna is committed to uplifting stories of Black identity as a means to explore international connections among the Pan African and Caribbean Diasporas. Concentrated on the soul, non-linear time and ritual, her works are composed of fabric, paper, projections, textile scraps and everyday objects. Her compositions integrate cultural symbols, treasured stories, and family photographs.

In 2023, Lehna was a resident artist at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art and Asian American Alliance’s-Bandung Residency 23’ and was a participant of Elsewhere Studio Residency. Lehna has received multiple awards including Space for Creative Black Imagination Makers & Research Fellowship. Lehna was one of the first recipients of the Joan Mitchell Center Residency. Trained through the Joan Mitchell Foundation. her practice includes work as a Legacy Specialist, preserving intergenerational artists archives and oral histories.

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

Each work recalls the spirit of Sankfofa, looking to our past to guide our future.

The piece pays homage to those lost in the Atlantic and Caribbean seas. As well as honoring protective water deities of the African Diaspora. It stems from my Wood and Water series, which is a body of work that represents protective spirits of nature from Afro-Indigenous pantheons. Wood and Water is made up of figurative and landscape based power objects, symbolizing “home” and my ancestral geographies, illustrating the spirit of our stories.

The window panes translate into a window into the soul as well as the ancestral realm both seen and unseen. It reflects the liminal spaces between the past and future. The windows each represent an unnamed enslaved African child who lived in the Mount Royal Mansion of Baltimore – where I first installed the work and obtained these materials.

Maya Henry Lewis

Brooklyn

Burning Future Fortunes, Mild Meld, Eat the Stars first: A Baptism, Joyful Harvest, and Starshine in Swampland,

2024

Mixed Media

9″ x 12″ each, Mixed Media

Artist Statement:

Maya Henry Lewis is a poet and mixed media artist. She works in book publishing, and is actively involved in trying to diversify the industry. Maya was a ‘21 Brooklyn Poets Summer Fellow, ‘22 Tin House Workshop alum, a ‘23 Key West Literary Seminar Fellow, and ‘23 Watering Hole Fellow. She has been published in Womanly, No Dear, The Amistad, and SoftPunk Mag, among others. She has exhibited work with sk.Artspace. She enjoys cartoons and thrift stores. Maya lives in Brooklyn, NY.

“I strive for my art to function as a map, of sorts, to a subjective or collective moment or feeling. It may not resonate with every viewer in the same way that a map of Washington state will mean very little to an east-coast kid like me, but the girls that get it…get it. My art often engages themes of legacy/inheritance, womanhood, and how those intersect with Blackness. More generally I am mulling over the many ways that inheritance manifests in Black America through our habits, laughs, sentiments, environment, bodies, etc. I find mixed media, more specifically collage art, to be the perfect vessel to engage these themes. Using found imagery – either from magazines, papers, or old family photos – feels like a physical representation of pulling the past into the present or re-engaging or re-imagining the past.”

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

I was deeply inspired by the theme “Imaging Our Future”. While freewriting I was reminded of a video I’d seen months back on the idea of retrocausality or the theory of backward causation (that the future might in fact be affecting the past). I was fascinated and birthed these pieces from that meditation. I’ve begun to call the ideas that resulted “poetic retrocausality” or the ways that the future can energetically and aesthetically change the past. I imagine these works are a future in which we, black folks, reimagine and actualize our past – to mean might be a magical form of self-healing.

Ashley Buttercup

Brooklyn

Still the Same Weeksville

2023

Acrylic on canvas

11″ x 14″

Artist Statement:

As an artist, I specialize in capturing time through portrait painting, switching between gouache and acrylic on small canvases. I am interested in genuine, unguarded moments that unfold “when nobody is looking.” Amidst my personal quest for diverse experiences, I’ve discovered that my most authentic self emerges in unscripted hours.

Beyond my artistic pursuits, I harbor a love for history. I’m dedicated to unearthing and celebrating black historical trailblazers, actively sharing my discoveries with my community through my paintings.

When I’m not painting, you can catch me immersed in books, crafting the perfect Spotify playlists, hoarding rocks, baking, embarking on culinary adventures with my brother and cousin, and showering my son with love.

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

Ironically, this piece is of Weeksville. I imagine this is what the past community envisioned for the future. Joy! The children are our future and if we can continue to lift them and each other we can achieve peace in the present and future.

Megan Tatem

Manhattan

VOGUE NIGHTS: THE AFTERMATH EP. 04

2020

1080 x 1080px, Video

Artist Statement:

My name is Megan Tatem and I am a Black queer multi-disciplinary artist, designer, and skater based in Harlem, New York using film, fine art, and pop culture to convey abstract and contemplative narratives. Throughout my career, I’ve served as an art director and designer for the New York Times, GQ, and Solange Knowles.

Louise Bourgeois asserts that you pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture. My interests and creative pursuits originate from a childhood imperative to construct realms to which I’ve never fully belonged. I found myself in a liminal space, perceived as too feminine for skateboarding, too masculine for fashion, too straight for women, and too gay for men. I navigate these dichotomies by collecting, assembling, and appropriating fragments of memories, music, and film, and converge and transform these elements to create alternate realities. My work captures the essence of disparate influences in a cohesive narrative. More specifically, my artistic approach draws inspiration from The Beastie Boys’ 1986 track She’s Crafty, which aptly characterizes my practice, encompassing handcrafted sculptures, a lo-fi aesthetic, and a street sensibility.

At the core of my practice is Vogue Nights: The Aftermath, an experimental episodic sequence that delves into the intersection of skateboarding and voguing, offering unique insights and perspectives on culture and identity. The series comprises twelve episodes for each season, exploring themes such as community, chosen family, reappropriated space, identity, urbanism, and sexuality. With a focus on illuminating profound connections and narratives within these dynamic communities, the series celebrates the resilience and artistry inherent in skateboarding and ballroom.

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

Vogue Nights: The Aftermath fits the theme of imagining a new future by pushing the boundaries of cultural expression and challenging traditional norms. At its core, the series explores the intersectionality of skateboarding and voguing, two subcultures that have historically been marginalized. By bringing these worlds together, Vogue Nights envisions a future where diverse communities can come together in celebration of their shared passions and identities.

Through its episodic format, the series offers viewers a glimpse into the lives of individuals who exist at the forefront of cultural innovation. By highlighting themes such as community, chosen family, and reappropriated space, Vogue Nights presents a vision of a future where people can find belonging and acceptance outside of mainstream society.

Furthermore, by focusing on identity, urbanism, and sexuality, the series challenges viewers to reconsider their preconceived notions about culture and expression. Vogue Nights encourages audiences to imagine a future where individuals are free to explore and celebrate their authentic selves without fear of judgment or persecution.

Zeus Walton

Brooklyn

Your Daddy Loves You, Lil Red

2023

Mix Media

18″ x 24″

Artist Statement:

“When we link things and unite things: their power keeps growing!!” – – – El Anatsui

Over a successful period of full-time/part-time attendance of 35 years; I earned my BS degree (World Gender and Women’s Studies/Mixed Media Art) cum laude from CUNY. My art career spans 50+ year of creative practice. Exhibitions: Solo; Women’s Museum of Resistance. Group Exhibitions: MoMA; Brooklyn Museum Gift Shop; NADA Flea; Riverfront Art Gallery; Fountain Gallery; NYC Mayor’s Office 30 Year Anniversary of People with Disabilities Act; Hofstra University Museum Gift Shop. Publications: The Returning Woman Magazine (cover); The Fountain Pen; The Fountain Gallery (3xs exhibition image); The ROAR Journal (cover). Awards: Alpha Workshop Program School; Maker Space NYC (giveback program). Residency Experience: Fountain House Studio (6 months); Universe City, Inheritance Shack (11 weeks).

How does this artwork connect to Weeksville and the theme “Imagining our Future”?

Your Daddy Loves You Lil Red Imagining a future that gyrls have safe spaces held/upheld, whole/holy enriched by the unconditional love of their Pops. The how and whens of their youth is remembered as a place where they were treated human, listened to, acknowledged and witnessed humanizing of the human condition regularly, no matter what happened. A place and space where one could absolutely have recall that all would be well and worked out and through as it always was. Some kind of assurance, some infinite futuristic thought processing that even if all we needed was not there help was on the way, same like my Pops said and meant when we was growing up. Growing up imagining a future so bright, it was burning our eyes, just like Pops said to us time and again…