Stephanie J. Woods

the wait of it, 2020

Photography series, nine years of detangled afro hair formed into a loosely woven vessel, umbrella tree and hand -harvested red clay from Winston-Salem, North Carolina

1209 Overbrook Rd, Richmond, VA 23220

the wait of it is a photography series made in response to the poem “Bleached” by poet Laura Neal. The title “the wait of it” is a play on words that speaks about the nine years spent growing and collecting my hair, as well as the psychological weight of being Black in America and the politicization of afro hair.

“I wrote ‘Bleached’ feeling targeted, feeling the MINOR in minority but the MOST capitalized upon. The irony of being broad, yet patterned with bias. Society is wielding with audacity and authority discrimination and ‘othering’. The final line in the poem: ‘Bleach back the world’ is a call to agency. A call for black folks to reclaim that authority, that naming, redefine our own identity.” - Laura Neal

Stephanie J. Woods is a multimedia artist creating textile, photography, video, and community-engaged projects. Woods earned an MFA from UNC Greensboro and is the recipient of several residencies and fellowships, including Halcyon Arts Lab, Fine Arts Work Center, ACRE, McColl Center, Ox-Bow, and Penland. She has exhibited her work at Smack Mellon, the Mint Museum, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center. Her work has been featured in publications such as Art Papers, Burnaway, and the Boston Art Review. Additionally, she has been notably recognized by the Chenven Foundation, the South Arts State Fellowship, and the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship.

 stephaniejwoods.com  | @stephaniej.woods

SITE INFORMATION:

“Richmond Community Hospital has a proud history. It dates to 1902, when pioneering physician Sarah Garland Jones founded it. She later teamed with other African-American doctors in 1907 to expand services and counter the segregated, second class treatment that Richmond’s white-directed hospitals offered African-American patients.” From Jeremy M Lazarus, “Health Care Cutback?,” Richmond Free Press, 2017. More information on Sarah Garland Jones  here .

LaRissa Rogers

We've Always Been Here, Like Hydrogen, Like Oxygen, 2020

Video installation

2500 Seminary Ave, Richmond, VA 23220

Initially inspired by the Latasha Harlins case, I use the symbol of the orange to question hybridity, self-care, passive and aggressive forms of violence, the commodification of Black bodies, visibility, and Black resilience. Whose voices get heard? Whose voices get left behind? Often public local media and subsequently global media choose to amplify the voices and experiences of men—systematically leaving behind or removing women and queer people from the public imaginary. I am interested in the ways Black and Brown women have overcome and created new methods of survival and self-care though the world refuses to see us.

LaRissa Rogers (b. 1996) is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Ruckersville, Virginia. She received a BFA in Painting and Printmaking and a BIS in International Fashion Buying from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2019 and is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of California Los Angeles. She has exhibited in the United States as well as in Doha, Qatar. In 2019 she had a solo exhibition at Rump Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, and is currently in a group exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art.

 larissamrogers.com  | @larissa_rogers

The Anderson

A Compilation of Student Films curated by Avy Umphlet

907 1/2 W Franklin St, Richmond, VA 23284

False Awakening, Nico Felsenheld, 03:45, Sculpture 2021

ImIneImIne, Lucia Biondi, 03:35, Dance 2022

Premonition/Protection, Eric Millikin, 04:18, Kinetic Imaging MFA 2021

Stop the Stutter, Lilly Parker, 02:01, Art Foundation 2024

I've Never Had an Asian Barbie, Hanyu (Jessy) Jiao, 01:50, Photo + Film 2021

Trio Me (My Mind is an Abyss, Part 1), Sydney Adams, 01:27, Art Foundation 2024

Somewhere the Driftwood Will Land,  Hien Nguyen, 04:10, Sculpture 2022

VCUarts The Anderson is pleased to present Student Video Work as part of InLight Richmond 2020. Initiated in fall 2019 by Curatorial Research Intern Avy Umphlet, The Anderson’s Student Video Work program provides a platform to showcase the video work of VCUarts students. Reflecting a variety of time-based approaches, the short video works included in this reel address the InLight 2020 themes of Safety and Accountability.

 arts.vcu.edu/community/the-anderson  | @vcuartstheanderson

Carl Patow

Richmond Residential Security, 2020

Electroluminescent wire, maps, LED rope

401 W Broad St, Richmond, VA 23220

Redlining was a discriminatory mortgage lending practice found in nearly every major US city in the early 20th century. Banks severely discouraged lending in areas with higher concentrations of African Americans, which were outlined in red on city maps. The lasting effects of redlining can be seen today. 

Patow’s work traces with light an actual redline border on a Richmond city block, while illuminated historic maps show areas that were deemed more and less risky for loans. The legendary Maggie Walker, whose commemorative statue stands at W. Broad Street and N. Adams Street, provided mortgages through her bank to Black citizens without consideration of redline discrimination. Additional information can be found at richmondresidentialsecurity.com.

Carl Patow is a 2019 graduate of the VCU MFA program in Kinetic Imaging and lives in Richmond, Virginia. He has exhibited videography, photographs, and installation art in a variety of local and national venues, receiving accolades such as “Best in Show” in the 2018 1708 Gallery InLight exhibition and a Regional Emmy® nomination in Topical Television. Residencies and workshops include Budapest, Hungary, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Center, and Pioneer Artworks. His work has been commissioned by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and is in the collections of TPT Minnesota Public Media, Duke University Archives, and private collections.

 carlpatow.com  | @carlpatow

SITE INFORMATION:

Founded by Grandvillie Moore in 1945, Moore’s Auto Body and Paint Shop was a long-running African-American-owned business. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Black Matter Productions

“A Messy Year” Hosted by: Dr. Chaz, Black Matter Podcast, 2020

New Media

311 W Broad St, Richmond, VA 23220

Black Matter Media Productions at InLight is more than just a podcast. It’s a vibe, an illumination of a critical kiki for selected stories of Black and PoC creatives in Richmond and beyond. Black Matter is an interdisciplinary social platform including film, sound, and performance production that centers knowledge production rooted in everyday Black experiences from our lives as told in our voice. Black Matter Media seeks to use the classroom or the camera as tools to defy containment and disrupt monolithic tropes about Black and queer folks.

During InLight, audiences will have the opportunity to support Black collaborators who remix traditional education to scale up Black joy, resistance, and knowledge production that celebrates nuance and fluid identity by any means necessary. Many of the comrades and accomplices featured in this project worked on the film Everyday Black Matter (originally released at the 2020 Afrikana Film Festival and supported in part by The Valentine.) The film is available to stream through the InLight website. 

Chaz Antoine, PhD is a self-identified Blackademic: a public humanities educator, performer, and media-arts storyteller and cultural critic, whose interdisciplinary work is rooted in Black joy as critical practice. Through pushing the boundaries of the classroom, Chaz’s scholarship merges writing and performance to center Black queer experiences as a form of fine art. Chaz directs Blackacademic programs at Six Points Innovation Center and both directed/wrote for community film projects, DON’T TOUCH MY HAIR RVA, and Everyday Black Matter. Chaz works in community with artists, professors, and designers to center queer worldmaking as a way to remix and disrupt rigid notions of what it means to be a “scholar,” and utilize the university campus to shine reparative light on the knowledge and cultural production that comes from every day Black spaces in Richmond and beyond. A graduate of VCU’s Media, Art, and Text PhD program, Chaz has worked around the world and back but finds Richmond to be the city to always keep home roots.

Contributing Guests: Chaz Antoine (director/host), Johannes Barfield and Wes Taylor (sounds), O.K. Keyes (special effects assist), Nicholas Taylor (Everyday Black Matter videographer) + 4 Podcast Guest from Richmond Artist/Activist/Educator community. Support Black Matter Every day(.)

Black Matter Podcast is available on  Spotify  and  Apple Podcasts . The full Everyday Black Matter Film is  available online  as well.

 6picrva.org/blackademic-in-residence  | @iammylife_chaz (insta) @chz_phd (twitter)

Christine Wyatt + Amena Durant

Ti'ed, 2020

Live performance and dance

*SATURDAY ONLY* — live-streamed performances at 6:35, 7:15, 8:00, and 8:40 on Instagram @1708gallery

214 W Broad St, Richmond, VA 23220

Ti’ed explores and exposes social, political, emotional, and psychological sources of exhaustion. It “interrogates the American psyche,” questioning the conventions and constructs of society. Christine looks to history to contend with the vicious cycle of escaping fatigue while being exhausted by that attempt. The work is an embodiment of things that are true and a searching for the wisdom of how we thrive in it together. This is a pursuit of liberation and release. Ti’ed (the duet iteration) continues this exploration and research but acknowledges the now as history in the making. It is performed as a duet to demonstrate the ways current circumstances affect us. In the pandemic, Christine has found safety and consolement in two-person communities and partnerships. In this work, two people moving together demonstrates the significance of needing each other to maintain our humanity.

A(mena) (they/them) currently occupies Powhatan land. Mena is a mover, creator, transcender of time, a vessel for their ancestors, abolitionist, anti-institutionalist, educator, liberator for all black and indigenous people, lover, carer and truth seeker. Mena resists the machinery of capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, trans/homophobia, ableism and western civilization. Mena is a black person that centers black trans, non-binary and queer people in their everyday life. Mena believes they are not in this world to be liked through the lens of whiteness. Mena centers joy and pleasure as a way reclaiming themselves and their community.

Christine C. Wyatt (she/her/we), born and raised on Piscataway Land (Baltimore, MD) is a black free-lance/anti-institutional dance artist, performer, and facilitator of movement experiences. She has her amazing parents to thank for all her endeavors in the performing arts. Christine received a B.F.A. in Dance & Choreography. Known for her community centric work and organizing in undergrad, she presently continues legacies of resistance, equity, care, and abolition through her art making and community practice. Her study of Africanist movement values and improvisation have influenced her practice and perspective of art as  resistance. Her passion for anti-oppressive, community-based work keeps her interest in the field of dance alive. 

@chriscat_bar @amena.sehay

Performing Statistics

Freedom Constellations: Dreaming of A World Without Youth Prisons, 2020

Interactive media mural

300 E Broad St, Richmond, VA 23219

Freedom Constellations: Dreaming of a World Without Youth Prisons is an interactive mural created by Performing Statistics in partnership with CodeVA and RISE for Youth. 

Richmond youth worked with muralists, photographers, filmmakers, programmers, and radio producers to imagine a future where no youth are incarcerated. Together, they transformed their stories, dreams, and demands into a mural that comes to life through augmented reality and interactive light and sound. 

Performing Statistics is a cultural organizing project that models, imagines, and advocates for alternatives to youth incarceration. The project provides direct services and support to youth navigating the justice system in Richmond, Virginia. They also collaborate with young people impacted by the justice system across the country through organizational and creative strategies to close youth prisons. 

CodeVA is a Richmond-based nonprofit that partners with schools, parents, and communities to bring equitable computer science education to all Virginia students.

RISE for Youth (Re-Invest in Supportive Environments) is a nonpartisan campaign committed to dismantling the youth prison model by promoting the creation of community-based alternatives to youth incarceration. 

 performingstatistics.org  | @performingstatistics

Stephanie J. Woods

the wait of it, 2020

Five-channel installation featuring moving audio photographs, nine years of detangled afro hair formed into a loosely woven vessel, hand-harvested red clay from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, audio poem by poet Laura Neal, and an original score by artist Johannes Barfield

3511 P St, Richmond, VA 23223

the wait of it speaks about the nine years spent growing and collecting my hair, as well as the psychological weight of being Black in America and the politicization of afro hair. Accompanying this work is the poem “Bleached” by Laura Neal, and an original score by Johannes Barfield that includes the sound of fire and the sound of water. The audio was inspired by the 2020 Minneapolis riots and the following Martin Luther King, Jr. quote: “We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know that we will win. But I've come to believe we're integrating into a burning house."

Stephanie J. Woods is a multimedia artist creating textile, photography, video, and community-engaged projects. Woods earned an MFA from UNC Greensboro and is the recipient of several residencies and fellowships, including Halcyon Arts Lab, Fine Arts Work Center, ACRE, McColl Center, Ox-Bow, and Penland. She has exhibited her work at Smack Mellon, the Mint Museum, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center. Her work has been featured in publications such as Art Papers, Burnaway, and the Boston Art Review. Additionally, she has been notably recognized by the Chenven Foundation, the South Arts State Fellowship, and the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship.

 stephaniejwoods.com  | @stephaniej.woods

SITE INFORMATION:

Oakwood Arts makes art and careers in creative industries accessible to all through community engagement, inspiring programming, and experiential education. They are a fledgling arts center (Oakwood Arts) and gallery (P35) in the Oakwood neighborhood of Richmond's East End. By bringing together members of the community to engage with art in all its forms, we seek to make art, as well as careers in creative industries, accessible to all. We also aim to serve as a secular space in a rapidly changing neighborhood for economically and culturally diverse neighbors to gather, interact, and learn from one another.

The Kinfolk Effect (TKE)

No Safety Here, 2020

Sound, light, projection and performance

*SUNDAY ONLY*

2803 Dock St, Richmond, VA 23223

No Safety Here is an interactive, site-based and sound meditation that portals through spiritual, emotional, economic, and devotional experiences of Blackness across time, geographies and space. No Safety Here is positioned at points of disembarkment, of entering and exiting—where enslaved people were transported into the spirit of both the Powhatan River and the native communities that surround it. This is an invitation to haunt and stir the air of Ancarrow’s Landing, Great Shiplock Park and Shockoe Bottom and to meditate on site, sight,and cite. No Safety Here is a work of Black surrealism—grounded in fugitivity and marronage—and is provoked by the absurd notions of unskilled and essential labor, private property, and land ownership.

The Kinfolk Effect (TKE) is the collaboration of artist muthi reed and cultural strategist Sage Crump. TKE is an incubation space for multimedia interdisciplinary artwork that examines the movement of Blackness through time and space. TKE co-works with communities of place and spirit using sound, light, projection, live making audio and video and recycled materials. They use disruption to the current built environment to amplify reverberations that affirm communal experience and deeply examine the personal. TKE works to connect the conceptual and the tangible, sparking new relationships and making fresh existing connections to land, environment, and each other.

 houseoflux.info  | @everydayumuthi @sagesense

Amy Smith

Murmuration, 2020

Light installation

T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge

Murmuration refers to a flock of starling birds in flight. These birds demonstrate a remarkable ability to maintain cohesion in a group, even while in uncertain and dangerous environments. They do this by relying on a balance between individual decision making and paying close attention to their immediate neighbors in order to maintain the integrity of the murmuration and navigate safely through the air as a group. They find safety by relying on both themselves and their neighbors.

Amy Smith is a mixed media painter currently living and working in Richmond, VA. Inspired by the work her mother and grandmother did in their gardens and around the home, her work speaks about the power of nature and nurture and the strength of the feminine. She is a painter who is very much in love with painting, color and pattern. Amy Smith graduated VCU School of the Arts in 2016 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking. She has shown her work in galleries throughout Richmond and Northern Virginia. In 2017, she was the recipient of the People’s Choice Award at 1708 Gallery’s annual Inlight exhibition, and in 2018 she was awarded a residency at the Cité Internationale des Artes in Paris, France. Most recently she was honored to be able to participate in the Mending Walls project in Richmond, Virginia.

 amymariesmith.com  | @amymariesmithmarie

Barry O’Keefe

Richmond Dept. of Community Graphics, 2020

Bicycle projection trailer booth, analog projection, sound

Brown's Island near Tredegar Pedestrian Entrance

This handmade and environmentally responsible bike-trailer projection booth is a traveling service of The Richmond Department of Community Graphics: a fictitious department of city government. Inspired by the WPA Federal Artist Project and Puerto Rico’s División de Educación de la Comunidad, which mobilized artists in service of their communities during times of cultural crisis, the projection booth presents experimental, multimedia Public Service Announcements.

This PSA illuminates different facets of the mounting climate and ecological crisis—a profound issue of public safety—combining scientific data with ambient sound, field recordings, shadow puppetry, slide projections, and printed publications to demonstrate how the ecological crisis is impacting and will continue to impact Richmond. 

I believe that the stillness of the pandemic has opened the collective psyche to the reality of suffering in a new way. This has been intensified by the awakening of many to the suffering of Black lives. In the coming year I believe this city and the world is called to continue extending compassion further outside of ourselves, and deepen our collective lament. This PSA seeks to help us process our collective grief, and proposes the revelatory experience of interconnectedness as a gateway into healing and action. 

Barry O'Keefe is an artist from Richmond, Virginia working in printmaking, painting, and public art. In 2016, he received an MFA in printmaking from Ohio University. His work engages with cultural amnesia, neglected public spaces, and the design of the contemporary landscape. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in many private and public collections, including The Valentine, the Black History Museum of Virginia, and the Library of Virginia.

 barryokeefe.com  | @barryokeefe

Dustin Klein, Alex Criqui, Miguel Carter-Fisher, Josh Zarambo

Marcus-David Peters Circle, 2020

Painting, collage, print, projection mapping

1714 Idlewood Ave, Richmond, VA 23220

This project is inspired by our involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement and our image and video projections at Marcus-David Peters Circle. We have witnessed and continue to witness change and the visual manifestation of this change in many communities, and want to preserve these experiences through animated painting. Our hope is that through this work we can both create a memorial for Marcus-David Peters, continue the discussion about reclaiming spaces, and help raise awareness around the need for policy change in our city’s police force—particularly relating to incidents involving mental health, Black lives, and police violence.

This is a collaboration of four multidisciplinary artists, Dustin Klein, Alex Criqui, Miguel Carter-Fisher, and Josh Zarambo, blending styles of traditional art, digital collage, animation, and projection mapping.

 videometryvisuals.com  | @videometry, @rcriqui, @miguelcfstudio, @zaramboart

Shazza Berhan + Laura Chow Reeve / Southerners On New Ground (SONG)

The World We Want Is Us

Presented by the ICA in conjunction with InLight

601 W Broad St, Richmond, VA 23220

The World We Want Is Us presents large-scale projections onto the ICA’s facade by artists and Southerners On New Ground (SONG) members Shazza Berhan and Laura Chow Reeve. They co-created a series of visuals that combine text and imagery to envision a new future for Richmond. For instance, one depicts protest as a form of community care; another presents a future in which investments in the public good through health care, housing, education, and the arts leads to safer, happier communities. The artists hope for a time “in which conditions have changed and we no longer have to fight for dignity and basic safety, building on the work of local organizers, activists, and advocates who have been working for justice, reformation and liberation.”  

Projections will be visible on the ICA’s exterior each evening, weather permitting. Pedestrians may view from the Belvidere sidewalk or within the Resiliency Garden. Please maintain social distancing. 

The World We Want Is Us is a project for Commonwealth, and extends the exhibition’s questions about how our common resources are used to influence the wealth and well-being of our communities. It is presented by the ICA in conjunction with InLight. 

Shazza Berhan is an artist and VCU alumna who focuses on painting and drawing. She has worked with DC’s ARTECHOUSE and currently supports Operations at the American Art Therapy Association. Laura Chow Reeve is a writer and illustrator known for her “Radical Roadmaps'' series. She won the 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and is a Senior Editor at  Joyland Magazine . Both are members of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), a social movement nonprofit working to “build, sustain, and connect a southern regional base of LBGTQ people in order to transform the region.” Videometry Visuals is a project of Dustin Klein, a lighting designer and technical effects expert known both for his work supporting performing artists and his now-iconic projections onto the base of the Lee Monument in Marcus David Peters Circle in Richmond. The project evolved from SONG VA Statewide Organizer Rebecca Keel’s role as a facilitator for Summer Sessions: Commonwealth in 2019, a public research and discussion series that considered the larger ideas of Commonwealth in relation to Richmond.

Chaz Antoine Barracks

DONT TOUCH MY HAIR rva

Presented by The Valentine in conjunction with InLight

1015 E Clay St, Richmond, VA 23219

Based on footage collected during a Richmond-based documentary directed by Dr. Chaz Antoine Barracks, PhD, DONT TOUCH MY HAIR rva explores diverse African American identity through stories of Black hair experiences. Featuring images by DeAudrea ‘Sha’ Rich and Nicholas Taylor, this media-arts project looks at Black identity by both centering and creating spaces that embody Black cultural production—and understanding everyday Black life as fine art. Beauty salons and other Black-owned locations are included as spaces of community and uninhibited joy. Look through the camera lens to explore nuanced and imaginative concepts of Black homes, which provide space to exist freely and authentically. Originally planned for a gallery space, the project paused as the creators considered how to present an art exhibition in the pandemic era. Now, experience DTMHrva at the Valentine as an exterior installation and through new film presented at the  Afrikana Independent Film Festival .

Artists work featured in this current exhibition project are: DeAudrea ‘Sha’ Rich, Nicholas Taylor, NontsiKelelo Mutiti, Wes Taylor, Dr. Pamela Lawton, Tawnya “Dr. T” Pettiford-Wates, Nicholas Vega, Sasha Williams, Johannes Barfield, Christine Wyatt, Christina Nicole Miles, and many more from the Richmond Black arts community.