Monthly Musings: Honoring Juneteenth and Pride
Friday, June 19th is Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. June is also Pride Month, which commemorates the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in 1969. Although the history of this uprising and the LGBTQIA movement as a whole is often centered around white activists, the Black-led civil rights movement of the late 1960s undoubtedly had a direct influence on the LGBTQIA+ and other liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and we continue to see the intersection of these movements and their legacies today.
In honor of these past struggles, and in recognition that the fight for all Black lives in this country continues, this month I am highlighting work by two Black photographers—Daesha Devón Harris and Gioncarlo Valentine—whose work directly addresses these historical and current realities.
Daesha Devón Harris
You bid me hold my peace
And dry my fruitless tears
Forgetting that I bear
A pain beyond my years
2017
In June 2018 Blue Sky exhibited Just Beyond the River: A FolkTale Series by Daesha Devón Harris, which is an exquisite collection of mixed media portraits inspired by African American folklore, slave narratives, and Harlem Renaissance poetry. To create each piece, Harris places transparencies made from found vintage photographs in bodies of water near her hometown of Saratoga Springs and photographs them alongside the existing rocks and flora. The resulting aquatic still lifes reside in wooden shadow boxes along with small keepsakes, and are covered with glass etched with lines of poetry. These boxes, which Harris calls “reliquaries,” bring these portraits of African Americans to life, merging real and imagined histories to build new narratives that emphasize strength, resilience, and self-determination.
Harris writes, “This series is about the Black experience that is deeply connected to the landscape, the idea of home and its intersections with water. Water becomes symbolic of Freedom, whether it is in this world or the next, and at the same time is evidence of social and cultural boundaries. Water has to be crossed on the journey to Freedom.” The artist also explores the historical and symbolic connection between water and freedom in One More River to Cross, a series of images taken underwater as solitary Black figures cross a shallow river or stream. For her exhibition at Blue Sky, Harris printed some of these images on silk tapestries that were suspended from the ceiling, immersing viewers in these underwater landscapes and allowing the fabric to mimic the flow of water as visitors move throughout the gallery.
installation shot of Daesha Devón Harris’s solo show at Blue Sky, June 2018
To learn more about Harris’s extensive research and labor-intensive process behind both series, please check out her artist talk at Blue Sky in 2019 after she completed a Blue Sky residency at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.
Gioncarlo Valentine, Just Thoughtful Enough to Be Touched, 2018
In his series, The Soft Fence, Gioncarlo Valentine approaches the intersection of gender and race from a queer perspective, photographing straight Black men in his hometown of Baltimore in order to try to understand what exists beyond the facade of performative masculinity. He explains, “As a Black, femme gay man, growing up in Baltimore, I regularly felt and oftentimes still feel, left out of the complicated family unit that is the Black community. Spaces of brotherhood within our community are especially restrictive, rarely seeking to include femme and/or queer men.”
These portraits, taken over a period of three years, are intimate and tender, and reveal vulnerabilities that are often hidden beneath hardened barriers required for self-preservation. By opening up a space for softness to exist in front of the camera, Valentine invites viewers to question their preconceived ideas of Blackness and masculinity. He writes, “I hope that the work challenges viewers within the Black diasporic community to look harder and softer onto themselves and each other, to ask more questions and task themselves to understand that we all deserve tenderness, we all deserve spaces of love, safety, and freedom within our community.”
The above quotes were taken from Valentine’s introductory essay in his Blue Sky book. I also highly recommend watching this video of his conversation with former Executive Director Lisa DeGrace for his solo show in June 2019 at Blue Sky.
“Monthly Musings” is written by Exhibitions Manager Zemie Barr and highlights work from past and present Blue Sky exhibitions that share a common theme. Thanks for reading.