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‘Black Space Matters’ Exhibit Transforms Asphalt Lot into Garden

VCU CNS | October 12, 2020

Topics: Duron Chavis, food insecurity, Institute For Contemporary Art, Institute for Contemporary art VCU, Quilian Riano, resiliency gardens, Silly Genius, Stephanie Smith, VCU Institute of Contemporary Art

The “Commonwealth” exhibit at VCU’s Institute for Contemporary Art features work from 10 artists, including an outdoor garden installation by local activist Duron Chavis — which looks pretty amazing from an overhead view.

A local activist transformed a vacant lot outside the Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond to highlight issues of food security and the importance of Black and brown community spaces.

The “Commonwealth” exhibit at Virginia Commonwealth University’s ICA features work from 10 artists including an outdoor installation created by activist and community farmer Duron Chavis, who builds gardens throughout Richmond. The full exhibit seeks to examine how common resources influence the wealth and well-being of communities.

Chavis proposed the resiliency garden exhibit in 2019, during a public forum at the ICA. The resiliency garden — food grown to weather the tough times and to have food independence — is installed in an asphalt lot at Grace and Belvidere streets next to the ICA, and features 30 raised beds of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

Concept drawing for Duron Chavis’ Resiliency Garden, 2020 design by Quilian Riano of DSGN AGNC.

An extension of the garden exhibit is the “Black Space Matters” mural by Southside artist Silly Genius. A wall in the lot is painted, with fruit making the word Black; beneath the garden in big, yellow letters is the phrase “Space Matters.” The garden beds have historic quotes from civil rights leaders Kwame Ture and Malcolm X, among other activists. 

“Black Space Matters means that Black people need space,” Chavis said. “We need space that is explicitly designed, planned, and implemented by Black and brown people.”

Chavis, along with a crew of volunteers, started building the garden on Aug. 10, while the ICA temporarily closed to install other exhibits.

“We invited him to think with us about how to activate a vacant lot next to the ICA,” said Stephanie Smith, ICA chief curator. “You could think about what it means to take a space and institutional resources, then give them over to an activist.”

Chavis seeks to address lack of food access through his activism. Food insecurity, defined by the United States Department of Agriculture as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food,” is an issue in Richmond’s low-income neighborhoods. The city had over 35,000 food-insecure people in 2018, according to Feeding America, a network of more than 200 food banks.

“In a conversation about food justice, Black people are predominately impacted by lack of food access,” Chavis said. “We need space to address that issue.”

Low income communities need access to resources and necessary skills to solve food wealth issues on their own, he said. 

“We do not need anybody to come into our community to drop off food,” Chavis said. 

He’s been doing work like this since 2012 and doesn’t have a hard count of how many garden beds have been built. 

“Dozens, oh god, it’s all across the city,” he said. 

Chavis amplified his efforts this year because of the pandemic. He fundraised and received a grant, according to a VPM report, to build over 200 resiliency gardens with the help of volunteers. 

The “Commonwealth” exhibit features work from 10 artists including an outdoor installation created by community farmer, Duron Chavis, who builds gardens throughout Richmond. The resiliency garden is installed in an asphalt lot next to the Institute for Contemporary Art and features 30 raised beds of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Photo by VCU CNS.

Quilian Riano, an architect at New York studio DSGN AGNC, designed the concept drawing for the ICA garden, which was envisioned as a public space for conversation and lecture. The completed garden is nearly identical to the original design, except with an added texture and dimension, Riano said.

 The “Commonwealth” exhibit will be open until Jan. 17, 2021. After the exhibit ends, the gardens’ supplies and plants will be redistributed to other resiliency garden project locations throughout Richmond. Chavis collaborates with other groups and people to help people grow their own food during the pandemic.

Tickets to the indoor exhibitions can be reserved on the ICA website. Exhibits include a video performance by indigenous artist Tanya Lukin Linklater, Carolina Caycedo’s “Distressed Debt” and a sculpture by Lukin Linklater and Tiffany Shaw-Collinge.

Written by India Espy-Jones, Capital News Service. Top Photo by VCU CNS.

Black Artists Claim Their Own Creative Space in Manchester

Chelsea Higgs Wise | August 14, 2018

Topics: Ajay Brewer, black artists, Brand New Wave barbershop, Brewer's Cafe, First Fridays, J. Bizz, Jay Bordeaux, Justice Dwight, manchester, Manchester Manifest, murals, RVA ARt, rva creatives, Silly Genius

For black creatives living in Richmond, it’s not enough to follow the trends and changes in our ever-shifting city. While all artists have to stay relevant and engaged with the broader culture, there are extra challenges black artists face. A partial list of the extra barriers black artists face includes racism, both implicit and intentional, gentrification in their communities, and the appropriation that happens when white communities step in to fill the gentrified spaces.

This article originally appeared in RVA #33 Summer 2018, you can check out the issue here, or pick it up around Richmond now. 

The aesthetic and look of Richmond are part of a rising popularity that’s sparked infatuation with our collective creative energy. But what about the people who have been here, made it ripe for the picking, and who now struggle to get by? For black folks, organizing isn’t just for marches and confronting white supremacy on Monument Avenue, but an everyday practice to ensure economic justice when threatened by local government and corporate entities. Sometimes, it’s about establishing new spaces for black art, after gentrification and white angst have pushed us out of the neighborhoods where we once lived and worked.

Work by Justice Dwight

On Southside, in the Manchester neighborhood, community boosters formed the Manchester Manifest group to support and build up black art. Working with AJ Brewer at Brewer’s Cafe, they’ve brought back the First Friday Art Walk, an event which first began in Jackson Ward, to celebrate black music and visual arts from the local community.

Black artists in Richmond are used to facing extraordinary challenges. When 6th District City Councilwoman Ellen Robertson proposed using city funds for public art to balance the budget, a measure that passed by a majority council despite opposition from Mayor Levar Stoney, it shocked Richmond’s white art community. For black artists, it was just another day of being undervalued and silenced.

Silly Genius

One of these artists, who goes by the name Silly Genius, said the “lack of support does not feel new.” He links the sprouting of the RVA brand with new challenges to black artists in Richmond; starting with First Friday, which began in Jackson Ward as a civic boost for black residents and businesses owners.

Genius said that event has changed, in tone and audience, due to efforts by the city and Virginia Commonwealth University to create a more mainstream, trendy space for white outsiders. As First Friday became centered on a part of Broad Street that was eventually officially classified as “the Arts District,” police presence increased, the area became viewed as more dangerous, and the original art walk was shut down.

Silly Genius

Genius said First Friday may have become “easier to swallow” for the city, but “the shift left an impact on local artists.” It’s just another example of a city that uses the energy of its black population to appeal to white visitors.

Artist Justice Dwight said the problem also happened with individual galleries not taking an intentional approach to include local artists. “Spaces are almost like a secret. There’s no info out there [about] where to find these spaces for artists. While some spaces are obviously moving forward, some still seem to have quotas. Meet those, and move on,” Dwight said.

Creative Bordeaux

Muralist Creative Bordeaux has his own story of facing racism as an artist in Richmond. After being hired for a mural, he saw it pulled down almost as quickly as it went up. The problem: The work depicted a black man.

“I was doing a nautical theme mural, I wasn’t specifically asked to do anything that was cartoony. When [the client] initially viewed the work, and said it scared him, I was confused at his fear because the sketch was a man in a field with butterflies,” Bordeaux said. Despite the beauty of his work, the man said he “didn’t want any Nelson Mandela faces or black power fists on the piece. But I wasn’t drawing Nelson Mandela, I was drawing a man, who was black. He had the full lips, wide nose and pronounced black features. The hand wasn’t closed, it was open and there were butterflies. It took a second to hear what he said… well, what he was really saying. He was saying that a black man, in any form, is scary. I am a black man, being told not to draw black men.”

Creative Bordeaux

These experience illustrate why organizing in black spaces is vital to the survival of black art as well as black creative minds. Receiving messages that your body invokes fear and is generally unaccepted in your own city is what keeps black folks in a silent rage. The cure for this rage is to enter a space made for black folks, by black folks, where the silence turns into the sounds of laughter and home.

J Bizz at Brand New Wave

Historically, one space that has supported the innovation of black events and culture free from gentrification is the barbershop. By the early 1900s, barbering and the men’s grooming industry became the hub of learning and produced unprecedented wealth and opportunities for black men during some of the toughest eras in modern history. If we are watching and listening carefully, we can see how this is manifesting in Richmond. Chatting with black artists, creatives, and go-getters, the Brand New Wave barbershop was a place continually mentioned as a place to get a haircut, but also to share ideas. Brand New Wave is a barbershop on Hull Street owned and operated by J. Bizz, who is also a musician who hosts events in the city. What happens in the shop is more than expression of hair and socializing of friends; it is also a place to organize the community.

When J. Bizz meets with clients, he hears their interests and what they want to see in their neighborhood, which is how the RVA Ball for a Cause Charity Basketball Game at the Ben Wallace Gym has come together. For two years, the event has raised funds for the youth of Richmond Public Schools.  J. Bizz uses a team approach, gathering clients, business owners, artists, and friends to play a pretty decent game of basketball. It provides a fun day for the community with food, entertainment, and resources, but also a stage for local musicians to promote their art. Brand New Wave gives more than hair; it gives hope of new pathways for creatives in the city.

That hope needs molding, planning, and execution to help artists overcome challenges that appear insurmountable. Alex Gwynn, a creative who has lived in Richmond since 2011 and works with J. Bizz, said that creating a team to showcase art for the world means creating a whole network of support within a community. The challenge is that everyone is working with limited resources of space, supplies, and promotion. But at the end of the day, the artistic community is coming together to make it happen. Through venues like Brewer’s Cafe and the Manchester Manifest group, the same energy that started First Friday in Jackson Ward is keeping spaces for black artists alive, long past the quota that limits our participation on Broad Street.

 

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