Weeksville Heritage Center Presents “Collapse: Black Wall Street Study,” an Art Exhibition by Damien Davis
Opening reception on Friday, January 24 at 6pm
NEW YORK, Jan. 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Weeksville Heritage Center presents an opening reception for Brooklyn-based artist Damien Davis’s solo exhibition, COLLAPSE: Black Wall Street Study, on Friday, January 24 at 6pm. Collapse investigates the history of Greenwood, the historic freedom colony in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood was one of the most prominent communities for African-American businesses during the early 20th century and was popularly known as America’s “Black Wall Street” until 1921, when white residents massacred as many as 300 black residents, injuring hundreds more and razed the neighborhood within hours. The exhibit puts Greenwood in conversation with historic Weeksville, located in modern-day Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and was itself one of the largest free Black communities of pre-Civil War America.
COLLAPSE: Black Wall Street Study re-centers oppressed narratives, by acknowledging both the inherent danger of taking up space as a black person, and by developing strategies to infiltrate and reframe these same narratives. Through Davis’ use of laser cut plexiglass, plastics, wood, geometry and color theory, a lexicon of shapes ignite conversations about currency, community and the effects of hyper visibility on the black body. The use of iridescent golds and silvers often associated with affluence, wealth, luxury and power are applied to his artwork. Through his use of these seductive materials and surfaces, space opens for more difficult conversations to occur.
“Many artists now are producing work that places an emphasis on the acknowledgement of ancestral trauma, as well as a need for corrective action through the research, self-care, archiving, and transformation of that trauma,” Davis noted in a statement. “As we near the hundredth anniversary of the Greenwood massacre, and as reparations are hotly debated in Washington, setting the stage for an open dialogue on the progress that has (or has not) been made is more important than ever.”
“We’re thrilled to welcome Damien and to present his work to the Central Brooklyn community,” said Rob Fields, Weeksville Heritage Center’s president and executive director. “Like the work we do here, Damien’s work powerfully engages viewers with questions of history, context, community and place.”
This exhibition is funded with the generous support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the NYC City Council Speaker Initiatives, and is curated by Natalya Mills, a historian, art philosopher, professor and curator based in New York.
About Damien Davis:
Damien Davis (b. 1984) is a Brooklyn-based artist, born in Crowley, Louisiana and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. His practice explores historical representations of blackness by unpacking the visual language of various cultures, questioning how these societies code/decode representations of race through craft, design and digital modes of production. His work has appeared at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Arts and Design, and Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, where he is currently an artist-in-residence.
About Weeksville Heritage Center:
Weeksville Heritage Center is an historic house museum whose mission is to keep the history of one of the largest free black communities of pre-Civil War America relevant and resonant for contemporary audiences. It achieves this through historic preservation, education, arts & culture, and civic engagement programming. In 2020, Weeksville will become the first cultural institution in over 20 years to become part of the NYC Cultural Institutions Group, a group of 33 organizations that have permanent line items in the New York City budget.
http://www.weeksvillesociety.org
SOURCE Weeksville Heritage Center
