Using Art to Talk about Race and Identity

Giselle Blanco-Santana (CAS’16) hangs her paintings at the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground. Photo by Smaranda Tolosano (CAS’16)

In the weeks following the deadly church shooting in Charleston, S.C., this past June, which claimed the lives of the church’s pastor and eight parishioners, all black, Ty Furman began to think about creating a forum where students could voice their experiences about race and identity through art.

“I regularly have these existential questions when tragedy strikes, about what the role of the arts in society is,” says Furman, managing director of the BU Arts Initiative. “And it always makes me reflect on what do we do, what can we do, how can we bring people together.”

He spoke to Pedro Falci (COM’11, SED’15), assistant director of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, about collaborating on the project. “I know Ty felt very strongly that something could be done to make sense of that massacre, but also about other instances of race-related conflict in this country,” says Falci. “Through subsequent meetings, we decided that student voices were the most important and should be the crux of this program.”

Assisted by the CFA Student Government and the Black Artists Alliance, they came up with a first-of-its-kind program titled Race, Identity & Art: A Forum for Student Art and Dialogue. The program consists of an art exhibition, a workshop on poetry and the spoken word, and performances, all by students and all reflecting their firsthand experiences navigating race and identity.

The art exhibition opens tonight, October 7, at the Howard Thurman Center, and runs through October 21. Photo-based artist Stacey Tyrell will talk about her work, which deals largely with themes of race, heritage, and identity as it pertains to postcolonial societies and the Caribbean diaspora, at 6 p.m., followed by an opening reception. Raised in Canada, Tyrell currently resides in Brooklyn.

The student performances are on October 14, preceded by a student workshop on poetry and the spoken word, led by award winning poet Alysia Harris. A linguist who studies African American English, Harris is a two-time national spoken word champion and her YouTube videos have had more than two million views.

Giselle Blanco-Santana (CAS’16), one of the artists exhibiting in the show, says she wanted to use art to explore the divisions between African American and Hispanic communities she’s witnessed in her life. One of her works, The Fence, examines the separation that exists between ethnic groups in contemporary American society.

“We often share the same experiences, both disheartening in the context of social, economic, and political discrimination, as well as similar triumphs,” says Blanco-Santana. “But what I have seen is that we are quick to place an imaginary fence between us, and think that activism for one group does not apply for the other. The fence in my painting represents the lack of solidarity between the two groups.”

Jordan Carter (CFA’17), president of the CFA Student Government and cofounder of the Black Artists Alliance, was enthusiastic about helping to sponsor the exhibition. “We hope to create a space with this event for safe, noninvasive dialogue about race and identity and one’s place speaking about issues like this,” says Carter. “I hope that with this, we can use the medium of art to address these issues going on in the world, in the country right now, and have that as the common ground for everybody else to want to join in on the conversation.”

“We hope the forum is about more than just coming, hearing people talk, and leaving,” says Furman. “We hope that there’s some actual dialogue going on. Somebody either says, ‘Oh, your experience appears to be similar to mine—let’s talk’ or ‘That experience is completely foreign to me—tell me about it.’”

The opening reception for Race and Identity in America: A BU Student Exhibition is tonight, Wednesday, October 7, at 7 p.m., at the Howard Thurman Center, 775 Comm Ave. The exhibition runs through October 21; the center is open Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., closed on weekends. Preceding the reception is a presentation and discussion with Stacey Tyrell at 6 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public. The student performance pieces are October 14, at 7 p.m., at the Howard Thurman Center. The student workshop with Alysia Harris is also October 14, at 4 p.m., in the George Sherman Union, Room 315, 775 Comm Ave. RSVP required to enroll in the workshop; respond here.

Jennifer Bates can be reached at jennb7@bu.edu.