{"id":1656,"date":"2022-11-01T15:04:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T20:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/free-as-they-want-to-be-artists-committed-to-memory-national-underground-railroad-freedom-center-cincinnati\/"},"modified":"2023-01-11T22:05:42","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T03:05:42","slug":"free-as-they-want-to-be-artists-committed-to-memory-national-underground-railroad-freedom-center-cincinnati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/reviews\/free-as-they-want-to-be-artists-committed-to-memory-national-underground-railroad-freedom-center-cincinnati\/","title":{"rendered":"Free as They Want to Be: Artists Committed to Memory | National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a title borrowed from James Baldwin, <em><a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/freedomcenter.org\/free-as-they-want-to-be\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/freedomcenter.org\/free-as-they-want-to-be\/\" target=\"_blank\">As free as they want to be<\/a><\/em> is co-curated by Cheryl Finley and Deborah Willis for the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial, a wide-ranging group of photo-based exhibitions and events in Cincinnati, Ohio. In the 19<sup>th<\/sup> century, Ohio was a \u201cfree state\u201d (where slavery was prohibited), but freedom, like history, is complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finley and Willis, both academics, come to the project inspired by archival materials. For Finley, it is an anonymous album of 50 tintype portraits of Black Americans, while Willis draws on extensive research into James Presley Ball, a 19<sup>th<\/sup>-century portrait photographer and Daguerrean who photographed Black individuals for a time in Cincinnati. Ball\u2019s vernacular photographs are a visual and conceptual touchstone for the included works. Among the Ball images is an 1860s portrait of Frederick Douglass, widely known as the most photographed man of the 19<sup>th<\/sup> century. His belief in the power of representation echoes strongly: At least three other artists in the show \u2013 Bisa Butler, Omar Victor Diop, and Isaac Julien \u2013 create direct likenesses of Douglass, rendered in a quilted piece and in staged photographic forms, as a means of considering his import.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/harris-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1447 lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 2560px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 2560\/1920;\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/harris-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1447\"\/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Daesha Dev\u00f3n Harris, <i>Don\u2019t you let nobody turn you around, One More River to Cross<\/i>, 2017. \u00a9Daesha Dev\u00f3n Harris. Courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>All the works in the show are dialogues with history. Among the standouts are Wendel White\u2019s series <em>Manifest<\/em>, 2012-ongoing, color images of photographs and objects related to Black citizens that have been collected by various institutions and stored in archives \u2013 boxes of the FBI files on Malcolm X, a curious yellow object in a specimen jar (<em>Intestine, Male, African Descent 1849 Cholera, <\/em>M\u00fctter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 2019\/2020), a shard of stained glass from the 16<sup>th<\/sup> Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1963. All are charged elements, photographed directly, with edges subtly out of focus, against a black backdrop \u2013 artfully forensic. Adama Delphine Fawundu, in her series <em>Face of History<\/em>, overlays an image of herself, a Black woman, photographed from behind, onto images of historical documents \u2013 newspapers, congressional records, and an advertisement for the Black Star Line, Marcus Garvey\u2019s Back to Africa initiative, creating a dynamic sense of past and present: Is the figure looking back or to the future? Daesha Dev\u00f3n Harris\u2019s video installation, <em>I want to cross over (I love these words. . . Liberty, Justice, Freedom)<\/em>, 2016,&nbsp;underwater footage of legs traversing a low river, brings calm to the act of crossing over complex ground set by slave narratives and Black folklore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The show is on view through March 6, 2023, at the <a href=\"https:\/\/freedomcenter.org\/free-as-they-want-to-be\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Underground Railroad Freedom Center<\/a>, an expansive institution described on its website as \u201ca museum of conscience,\u201d which concentrates on historical objects and narratives related to slavery, abolitionism, and social justice. There\u2019s a lot to see here besides art.&nbsp;<em>Free<\/em>, then, takes on added resonance because of its proximity to more educational exhibits in the building. The artworks rooted in, and inspired by, materials and people of the past, function as a poetic extension of the dialogues featured elsewhere in the building. Together, they traverse a formidable amount of territory\u2014difficult American histories and truths, and art\u2019s ability to grapple with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Part of the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial in Cincinnati, the exhibition is inspired by archival materials, including vernacular photographs of Black Americans and formal portraits of Frederick Douglass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"6704,6987,6815,7217,6426,15029,18428,7188,6671,6673,6479,1695","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5126,41],"issues":[30],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=1656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}