#InTheCity VISUAL ARTS FELLOWSHIP
The first of its kind at Harvard, #InTheCity Visual Arts Fellowship tasks six St. Louis-based fellows with capturing different parts of the city in response to the question “What is St. Louis to you?” All photo-based art practitioners in St. Louis, their work engages in the city with a belief in the transformative power of art to intervene in social realities. Artist fellows each receive financial support and access to Harvard’s educational resources in collaboration with the #InTheCity Student Board over the course of the 2019–20 academic year.
EXHIBITIONS IN ST. LOUIS and HARVARD CAMPUS
With curation by designer and Harvard Loeb Fellow, De Nichols, The Griot Museum of Black History in St. Louis will be home to the first exhibit of the artists’ photographs and public workshops. A landmark of North St. Louis with a 23-year history of presenting stories about the region's Black heritage, The Griot is the first black-owned museum in the city.
The second exhibition of artist fellows’ work will be at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies, on view in early May, held in conjunction with the campus-wide 2020 ARTSFIRST festival. A program of talks and events will be released for both.
OUR 6 FELLOWS
1. Shabez Jamal
Donny Bradfield (b. 1992, St. Louis) better known as Shabez Jamal, is an interdisciplinary artist based in St. Louis Missouri. His work, rooted in still portraiture and experimental video, interrogates physical, political, and social-economical space by using queerness, not as a means of speaking about sexuality, but as a catalyst to challenge varying power relations. Focusing his lens on fat, black, queer, male-identified persons, who are often seen as the antithesis to blackness/queerness, his work acts in radically redefining the parameters of racial and sexual identity.
2. Câmara Thomas
Câmara Ashanti Cruz (Câmi) Thomas is a documentary filmmaker, photojournalist, professional marketer, and writer. She's served as a marketing professional, having worked with national and international brands, while navigating life behind the lens as a content creator. A St. Louis native and resident, Câmi speaks on race relations in America, the importance of digital storytelling as a catalyst for change, and art as activism.
3. Nyara Williams
Nyara Williams is a 24-year-old, multidisciplinary artist and the Founder of Black.Clothing. She works with textiles, photography, and dance to promote Blackness, empowerment, education, and community. Nyara completed her Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Southeast Missouri State University. Her passion for photography stems from her love of storytelling, community, and Black culture.
4. Tiff Sutton
Photographer Tiff J. Sutton was born in 1981 in Rochester, NY, and was raised in suburban St. Louis, MO. She began documenting family and friends after receiving a Kodak camera as a Christmas gift in the early 1990s. While primarily a self-taught photographer, she also attended classes at Washington University in St. Louis and St. Louis Community College. As a woman creating photographs of other women, her work asks her subjects to turn their female gaze on themselves, thus challenging their prior self-conceptions previously created by the male gaze. Sutton works with film, digital, and instant cameras.
5. Alana Marie
Alana Marie is a historical-based storytellHer, artivist and digital content creator from St. Louis, MO. Her work is centered around the belief in everyone having a story, everything having a meaning, and every experience serving a purpose. Alana is in post-production of her first feature documentary titled, 'The Kinloch Doc,' which is the story about Missouri's First Black City and how two corporate decisions brought the city to its knees. In addition to filmmaking, Alana is (1) a freelance writer whose work has been published on several national publications and (2) a moderator for the Black Women w/Anxiety support group.
6. Collin Elliott
Collin W. Elliott is a designer & visual artist based out of St. Louis, MO. His work consists of narratives exploring the wide spectrum of male identity, space, grieving and futuristic thought. Elliott encourages participants engaged with the work to respond with action. Working under the name ‘In One Frame’, he seeks bridges to connect progressive thought in a collaborative manner.