There’s a new exhibit at the Gelman Gallery at the Rhode Island School of Design and the opening last month was packed with the exhibiting artists, their family and friends. A young artist named Ylsanita has a digital print in the show that uses augmented reality so viewers can see an animated version on their phones. It features a child playing with a toy dirt bike that is leaping over dump trucks and bulldozers.
“When I was a kid I was always enamored by bike culture and seeing people on bikes,” she said. “Whether it be dirt bikes or BMX bikes, and I always wanted to ride it, you know?” But she says the city’s policies of destroying dirt bikes get in the way of that. “So what I wanted to illustrate is that no matter what, the culture, it’s always going to emerge and it’s always going to continue on.”
The RISD Black Biennial features the work of 68 artists who are either connected to RISD or the greater Providence area and are from the African diaspora.
Chris Roberts is a professor at RISD teaching experimental foundation studies as well as history and theory. “For a lot of the Black students, for them to have an opportunity to contribute to a legacy – and for a school that oftentimes hasn’t always been most inviting and most inclusive of Black students – to have a really sort of student-driven effort that can be actually part of the school and fabric of the school and the students can look forward to” is important, he said. “I think it’s really important for them to see themselves as contributing to the history of the place, and not always sort of having to go against it or be an adversary, but that their energies can actually help improve and make the place better.”
The show is curated by two RISD students, Amadi Williams and Isaiah Raines. I met with Raines, who goes by Prophet, in the gallery a few days after the opening. He told me about the show’s theme, “Sonder” – a relatively new word that means “the realization that everyone, including strangers, has a life as complex as one’s own.” Prophet said the show is organized into five sections about how sonder is inspired in the viewer: philosophy, culture community, family, and self
One of the first works you see when you enter the gallery is a black and white photograph of a man standing outside a brick building with a cigarette in his hand. It’s by Raheem A.B. a photography student in his third year at RISD. “I try to develop ways that I guess kind of supersede what we expect with portraiture, usually of people that are of ethnic communities like Black people,” he said. “So kind of this entire exhibition being about the idea of sonder, and kind of stepping into someone else’s lives and also their subject position.”
Prophet said he made an effort to include as many local residents as possible. “We did an open call where we posted on Instagram, we posted up posters around Providence, just being like, ‘scan this QR, we’re accepting everybody’s art,’” he explained. “‘Submit if you’re Black and from the general Providence area,’ whether that be Fall River, whether it be up towards Boston and whether it be a little bit into Connecticut, just the area.”
Prophet grew up in the Providence area and now lives in Fall River. He said that, even though he grew up not far from RISD, it never felt accessible, comparing it to a castle on the hill in the clouds. “They have all these resources and they hoard them here, and you’re not allowed to access them if you’re not from RISD, if you’re not coming in through RISD,” he said. “And I think that it’s pretty detestable that RISD does that, but still expects students to go off the hill into Providence and take resources from Providence as well as eat off the resources here at RISD while claiming they don’t have resources, you know what I mean?”
Photography student Raheem also grew up in Providence. “Coming here from field trips, taking visits for after-school programs, you kind of get a feeling that, even though this place is in your backyard, for many of us in Providence it kind of still feels unreachable in a way,” he said. “It’s a strange feeling to actually get here because the perception is that this is going to be all fine and dandy, but there’s still always work to do. It’s really work not only to inspire others, I guess, and also show them that there’s a way to find your way in these bigger places, but to also show them that this is just one of many avenues you can go to, and that there’s always work to be done out there, especially for people like us.”
If you’re a casual visitor to the RISD Museum, you might miss the show. The museum is an amalgamation of a few different buildings and it can be a bit of a maze to get around. The Gelman Student Exhibitions Gallery is part of the Chace Center, the newest building in the museum – but it seems like the gallery was designed to be separate. You can only get to it from an elevator or from a set of stairs in the North Main Street entrance. “We can’t call it the RISD Museum,” Prophet explained. “I can’t say that the second Black Biennial was in the RISD Museum. It’s just in the building that the museum happens to be in.”
Prophet said this year’s Biennial only had a fraction of the funding that the first one had two years ago, and he feels like the school isn’t supporting it as much as they should. “There’s people within the institution that are actually about the show and about the community. And I do want to commend all of them,” he added. “But I want to make sure that that credit doesn’t go to RISD as a whole or RISD as an institution. It’s very much the work of these individuals within the institution doing work despite the institution to support us, that the institution likes to try to take claim for that. I feel like it’s just dirty. It’s wrong. It don’t feel right.”
Despite that lack of support, the curators have put together an impressive exhibition showcasing the work of Black artists from across the region. One last piece I want to highlight is on the far wall of the gallery as you enter the space. It’s called “The Abundant State of Things” by Boluwatife Oyediran. Prophet says it’s about “the immigrant experience and interacting with a culture that’s so different and feeling like an outlier.” A man is sitting casually on a couch. The background and his clothing are very dark, but his skin tones are rendered in blues and glowing whites, as if he’s the negative of a photograph, while bright points of yellow paint are scattered around him like an energy field. It’s painted in oil and acrylic, but it looks electric.
“I don’t have this experience,” Prophet said of the piece. “I’m not an immigrant. but I felt like I could understand, like I can understand what he was talking about on a more personal level than if somebody were to just tell me, and I feel like that’s what the show is about. That’s that sonder.”
The idea of “sonder” – the idea that everyone’s life is as complex as your own – comes through as you view the works and think about what it’s like to be a part of, but still feel separate from, a larger institution.
You can see the RISD Black Biennial through June 2.
