This letter was originally published in the Spring 2021 issue of Art Focus Oklahoma. I was invited to be the guest editor for the publication, which allowed me to work with some truly amazing artists and writers.
Check out the full issue at this link.
https://www.ovac-ok.org/art-focus-ok-magazine
Dear Art Focus Readers,
This special issue of Art Focus represents a small sampling of the exhibitions and projects being created in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the upcoming centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. There are dozens more projects occurring throughout the year, in and around the Historic Greenwood District in Tulsa and across Oklahoma’s galleries and cultural institutions. I think it is safe to say that this commemoration, and its implications, are on everyone’s mind.
This moment of remembrance and collective mourning belongs most critically to victims and survivors of the massacre, their descendents and all Tulsans who have fought hard to keep this important story at the forefront of our thinking. At the same time, as this history gains pop cultural notoriety and national attention, we can’t ignore how familiar this story is. Black Wall Street’s prosperity, independence and cultural influence threatened the white dominance of the newly formed state of Oklahoma at the turn of the last century. The white inhabitants of this land, stolen and plundered by a settler colonial state, could not abide Black autonomy and wealth. A mob of white supremacists, supported by the city’s most powerful institutions, destroyed hundreds of businesses, homes, and lives May 30-June 2 1921. The story of Black Wall Street is the story of America.
Black people aren’t a monolith, and neither are Black artists responding to the centennial of the Race Massacre. The works profiled in these pages includes elder artists reflecting on multiple waves of displacement experienced by Black Tulsans over the generations, and younger artists grappling with the possibility of an unknowable yet hopeful Black future. There are artists digging deep into the archives of life before, during and after the massacre, and artists capturing the present day energy of Black street art and youth culture. All of the artists consider the ongoing impact of the massacre itself and the heavily entrenched, decades long silence surrounding the tragedy.
I’ve also collaborated with a Tulsa based photographer and several poets to create the special feature Removal (Poetry and Photography). My jumping off point for curating this collection was the City of Tulsa’s decision to remove a Black Lives Matter mural from Greenwood Avenue. It was profound to see its triumphant arrival, created by a diverse community of artists and community members during the June 2020 uprisings. It was equally profound to see the city pave it over so unceremoniously just a few months later.
Admittedly, I was originally unmoved by the presence of that mural, as well as the others that appeared on city streets across the country last summer. As an artist, I should appreciate all forms of exuberant, collaborative, politically engaged visual expression. However, I saw mural after mural pop up, read the solidarity statements of corporation after corporation, and heard politician after politician claim their belief in the value of Black life; all while rarely seeing the substantive changes being demanded by the Black Lives Matter movement. I can’t stand seeing art used as the pretty wrapping around an empty box of insubstantial white platitudes. Black people deserve more than slogans and symbolism. We deserve to see police departments defunded and that money redistributed to grassroots community services. We deserve political and cultural leaders who act with accountability and trust. We deserve concrete monetary reparations given to all survivors of state sanctioned racist violence, including the survivors and descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
Artists are often asked to play precarious, divisive roles in the “Urban Renewal” of places like Greenwood and the surrounding areas. The neighborhood directly adjacent to what’s left of Historic Greenwood has been redeveloped into an Arts District filled with high priced luxury apartments, white owned bank and oil company headquarters, and primarily white led museums and arts organizations. Artists’ work is being used to make the site of a massacre into a tourist attraction that brings revenue into a neighborhood that continually disenfranchises Black people. The only artists (of any race) who can afford to actually live and have studios in the Arts District are those who are heavily subsidized by a private philanthropy that owns and manages a significant percentage of the property in the area. As an artist who was once supported by that philanthropy, I can say that political speech and art addressing gentrification and anti-black racism within the current ecosystem of Tulsa’s Arts District is actively discouraged and even censored. My Black creativity was valued, only so long as it did not “bite the hand that fed me.” My ambivalence towards that original Black Lives Matter mural wasn’t directed at the artists who created it, and certainly not its sentiments. Rather, I was unsettled at the prospect of that sacred phrase being used as cover for powerful people wishing to wash away their complicity in bad deeds. Now, as new murals, graffiti and street art emerge around Greenwood and across the city, I find myself in awe of how Black creativity adapts to these ongoing acts of removal, re-inscription, silencing, co-optation and repetition.
I hope that I’ve done this artwork justice, and that anyone reading this special issue takes the time to explore all of the different exhibitions and projects being created for and about the 100 year anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. I am deeply grateful to the incredible group of artists and arts writers who trusted me with their work. Each contributor came to this project with deep investment in the value of Black art and the importance of celebrating the ingenuity of Black artists in Oklahoma. What a gift they’ve given us.
Yours Truly,
Naima