‘I want to do projects that uplift the communities I belong to by using positive imagery. I want to cherish Black and Brown beauty, celebrate our heritage in a way that fights a system that establishes one-way of life and tells what and how things and people must be.’
Afro-Mexican artist Irene Reece about The Family Album as a Source for Activism
The ten steps we’ve taken forward we now have taken back with the tragic events of 2020. Every incident we see is pushing our society further and further from the idea of a happy place. A place where the scales of wealth and the weight of society are more evenly distributed, suggesting a change has taken place.
Black art has always been around, like the Harlem Renaissance which came about in the 1920s. We have always existed within this creative space and will continue to do so.”
We had to navigate our way around, we had to prove ourself. There is less of that now, you can be here in Zambia and you have a thousand followers on one of your social networking sites who are interested in what you do. But yeah, I think it’s about having the interest in something and following it through, It is…..I hate to use the word…… passion.
‘From the Vault’ entailed that we had to go into the storage spaces of both Fort Hare and Stellenbosch Universities to unearth these collections which have accumulated so much history as an attempt to bring them into the light. We were not so much interested in the grand narrative nor the well-known artists, but we aimed to reveal histories that have been silenced or hidden by remaining in the vault. We also aimed to identify gaps in these histories. We are also aware that in exposing the silenced, we were silencing others too.