WE FIRE: A Digital Art Series Crafted for Black History Month 2022
We happily unveil the WE FIRE series of digital posters created by our very own Arts Alchemist, Amanda Barnes.
She shares this conceptual process behind the poster series as well as a few research materials that provided a muse for the art:
“I am pulling on the feelings of nostalgia by experimenting with 70’s soul in colors and patterns. You see the deep black and brown, the red and rich orange. I am exploring the emotions of the Black experience in America by combining joy, frustration, pain, loss, and resilience. I look at emotion through history, today and the future.
Time has no influence on these emotions. Somehow the emotions that our ancestors felt, we still feel. That is the progression of America - or the lack thereof. By focusing on our emotions, we refute the idea that you have to ‘bottle it all down, keep it to yourself, don’t feel, just survive and do.’ But I want to argue and push for the freedom to be and healthy exploration of Black people’s emotions.”
“The new era of Reconstruction offered great promise and could have radically changed the history of this country. However, it quickly became clear that emancipation in the United States did not mean equality for Black people. The commitment to abolish chattel slavery was not accompanied by a commitment to equal rights or equal protection for African Americans and the hope of Reconstruction quickly became a nightmare of unparalleled violence and oppression.
During the 12-year period of Reconstruction at least 2,000 Black women, men, and children were victims of racial terror lynchings. That explains much of the moment we are now in—until there is a deep reckoning of this history of violence and racial oppression we cannot repair and remedy, and without that we are not going to be able to create the society we want.”
Read the EJI report, "Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876":
“Black joy is resistance, it is revolutionary, it is radical. Black joy is playful. Black joy releases endorphins.
Black joy is laughter, medicine, anarchy, self-preservation, justice. It is energizing. It is defiance. Black joy is beauty.
Black joy is unstoppable. It is freedom, triumph, relief, release, resilience and playfulness. It is political. It is a fundamental political act. It is celebration and refuge. It is invigorating. It is straight up health and well-being.
Black joy is frolicking on a beach or in a field of flowers. It is self-preservation, healing, rejuvenation, rebellion, autonomy. It is revelry, vitality, solidarity. It is loud, too loud. It is respite.”
Read Cole Verhoeven’s essay, “Towards a Black Joy Manifesto”:
“White Americans desire to be free of a past they do not want to remember, while Black Americans remain bound to a past they can never forget.
Even as a teenager, I understood that the absence of 1619 from mainstream history was intentional. People had made the choice not to teach us the significance of the year. And it followed that many other facts of history had been ignored or suppressed as well. What else hadn’t we been taught? I was starting to figure out that the histories we learn in school or, more casually, through popular culture, monuments, and political speeches rarely teach us the facts but only certain facts.”
Read The 1619 Project:
