On Tuesday, Feb. 18, the NC State Women’s Center joined with the African American Cultural Center (AACC) and GLBT Center to open its third annual art exhibit. The gallery is titled “Existence as Resistance: The Magic in Blackness” and is housed in the AACC art gallery on the second floor of Witherspoon Student Center.
Angela Gay, assistant director of the Women’s Center and curator of the exhibit, said the exhibit is a celebration of black excellence and community through a visual and artistic medium.
“It’s an exhibition of blackness,” Gay said. “It’s an exhibition of how black people — as an identity, as a collective, as individuals, as humans — create, cultivate, form community, form bonds; through art, through their existence, through their story, through their presence and through their futures.”
Shantoneeka Zorn, a second-year graduate student in college counseling and student development and a graduate assistant in the AACC, said this event is important because it shows black students prominently at a predominantly white institution (PWI).
“I think about the freshman class that just came in and the very small percentage of black or African American-identified students who came into that class,” Zorn said. “For me, this exhibit, being on a PWI, is important because black students don’t know that other black folks exist — are in offices, are in departments, are on this campus. So having this space where they can come and see these things, they can hear these stories, they can engage with people is really important.”
Local photographer Jaqueline Perry took the photographs that were used in the exhibit, which were made into collages by the subjects of the photographs. Joanna Ali, a graduate student in educational psychology, helped to facilitate the design and collage process. Perry said she wanted the photographs to feel real and did not want the models to pose. She wanted the models to do whatever felt natural to them.
“As a photographer, what I generally do is photograph people being themselves,” Perry said. “I’m okay with people who don’t want to smile … because it comes out in the photos that that’s just who they are. I would rather have someone who comes out in a photo as, ‘That’s just who I am’ than a forced smile or a look that wasn’t them, or that when they see the picture, they think that they were forced to pose like that.”
This exhibit and the concept of Afrofuturism was emotional for some of the people involved, as evidenced by a moving and emotional essay written by Chaniqua Simpson, a Ph.D. student in sociology, about her existence as a black queer woman and how her past will influence, but not direct, her future.
The opening ceremony also included remarks from John Robinson-Miller IV, program coordinator for the AACC, as well as a performance by Rasheedah Fletcher, a graduate student in school counseling, of Cynthia Erivo’s “Stand Up” from the movie “Harriet,” and a short film directed by Jerrica Jones, a fourth-year studying social work, focused on black resistance and existence through art, film, music, protest and more.
In years past, Gay said, the themes have attracted more female-identifying participants, and this year she wanted to make sure anyone felt they could participate regardless of their identity. Thus, the idea of “Existence as Resistance” was born.
“At a base level, we exist,” Gay said. “On an even more base level, for black people, we have to resist to exist, because this is not a world that allows us to exist freely just because we’re here. That resistance means something.”
The gallery was partnered with WolfTales through University Libraries to record the exhibit. It also asked what blackness and black futures meant to the attendees and participants. The recordings will be housed in the library archives.
The gallery will run through April 17 and is open to the public. The Women’s Center also invites students to attend its Womanism Teach-In and the History of Voguing event on March 18, from 6-8:30 p.m., as well as its Scholar Artist Talk: Black Trans Liberation event on March 31 from 5-7 p.m. The AACC would like to invite students to attend its Blacks in Wax live museum on Feb. 22 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Rasheedah Fletcher, a 2nd year masters student in school counseling, looks at art on display at the Existence as Resistance: The Magic in Blackness exhibit. The exhibit opened on Feb. 18, 2020 in the African American Cultural Center Art Gallery.
