Fairbanks, Alaska (KINY) – Black Alaskan Art Matters
BAAM is an initiative to uplift, highlight, and support Black creatives statewide. In partnership with Perseverance Theatre and the initial set of curators – Amble Rosa, MoHogani Magnetek, and Alyssa Quintyne, they sought to create a space specifically for Black creatives that both supported them in White predominant spaces and guided how to showcase and highlight Black creatives in equitable ways.
BAAM debuted in 2020 and again in 2021, both virtually showcasing works, discussions, storytelling, music videos, and curation talks with over 20 Black creatives across Alaska.
In 2023, BAAM held the first-ever Tri-City Retrospective in the state, finally showcasing the work of 10 local creatives in Fairbanks, Juneau, and Anchorage.
To date, this initiative has worked with over 30 Black creatives statewide, with various mediums, stages, backgrounds, and goals.
February is Black History Month, and it’s usually a time to reflect and honor the historic activism, revolution, contributions, and sacrifices of Black people –Africans, Black Americans, Caribbeans, and West Indians – made here locally and beyond.
However, those actions all have one foundation – love. Love of self, love of family and community, love of justice, love of a future, love of freedom and liberation. With this understanding, artists explore that in their work, and get deep underneath why Black activists, organizers, pastors, revolutionaries, and other community leaders – both past and present – do what they do. It’s because of love.
Inspired in honor of love and Black History Month, Perseverance Theatre and BAAM chose this theme that furthers their mission of highlighting and uplifting Black Joy and Excellence: Loved.
“It’s an ongoing commitment to us, to ourselves, each other, the community, the world – in making the intangible, tangible”, Quintyne said.
Artists to be featured in this year’s exhibition include Shevonda Kala, JaVeon Brigham, Ibn Bailey, Trina Lynch – Jackson, Sean Enfield, Antavia Hamilton, Brie McZeal, Lance Mitchell, Marquita Toney, Jameka Lache-Horton, Tamara Zenobia Coleman, and Dontae Robertson.
This year’s exhibit will feature a range of art styles, including videography, performance art, literary works, and more.
Both in-person and virtually, BAAM continues to celebrate and uplift Black Alaskan art and to take vital steps
toward equalizing representation in the arts.
Color in the Dark
William Butler Randle is a photographer who was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina.
He spent his early years in Beirut, Lebanon, and Cyprus and his adult years stuck in Corporate America before being captured by the beauty of Alaska.
Breaking from his past trajectory, William moved to Healy and used photography as a form of therapy. His photographs were not originally intended to be more than a creative outlet for himself; however, with his friends’ encouragement, he is excited to bring the first public showing of his work to the Bear Gallery in 2024.
We grow up with this definition of dark – seeing it as something to avoid, something to fight with light and happiness. But in Alaska, the dark is forced upon us. It is stretched and bent. It can be feared. Or it can be befriended.
Color in the Dark is a photographic journey of Alaska through a lens of mental health.
Not the dark that is devoid of light but the expanded dark of Alaska, both within and without, that becomes familiar and comforting. It is about learning to value the darkness for the color it brings to our life – befriending the dark, instead of hiding from it.
The exhibition will take place in the Bear Gallery in the Alaska Centennial Center for the Arts in Fairbanks, AK, opening on Friday, Feb. 2, and will remain in the Bear Gallery through Feb. 24.
