Attend The Truth & Innovation Artist Showcase at Contemporary Arts Center, Clifton Cultural Arts Center, and The Carnegie from July 12 through 14.
The Truth & Innovation Artist Showcase showcases works by 22 of the region’s leading Black and Brown artists. This year’s artists are creating projects across genres that focus on the modern BIPOC experience and explore the meanings of “Truth” and “Innovation.”
Each artist has also incorporated some form of community collaboration, ensuring we can all contribute to innovating toward a more just and equitable future for the Cincinnati region. The projects reflect the African American experience and the experiences of other often-underrepresented groups and cultural traditions throughout modern American life.
Now in its fourth year, the showcase is the yearly culmination of ArtsWave’s Black and Brown Artist Program, designed to support local BIPOC artists who interpret the themes of our times. It is one way that ArtsWave is working to increase the sustainability of organizations and artists that focus on preserving and advancing BIPOC arts and culture.
View a sample of images from some of the projects in the following slideshow and read about them below.
Truth & Innovation Artist Showcase Events and Projects
Film Screenings
Friday, July 12 | 5 p.m. – 9 p.m. | Contemporary Arts Center
Ashley Glass | Breaking the Silence: The Black Nursing Documentary
“The Black Nursing Documentary” seeks to illuminate Black nurses’ invaluable contributions, resilience, and stories. Through powerful narratives, interviews, and historical context, the film documentary will showcase Black nurses’ often overlooked but pivotal role in shaping healthcare, confronting adversity, and fostering inclusivity within nursing.
Brandon Hawkins | Where Honor is Due
“Where Honor is Due” is a commemorative mural that will adorn the Armory & Recreation Center in the beautiful Village of Woodlawn outside of Cincinnati. The mural celebrates the under-told stories of BIPOC military personnel who have served proudly but are often unrecognized.
Ethan Avery | Student Athlete
“Student Athlete” is a short film following a star college athlete as he struggles between becoming a pillar for social change and focusing on his future career as a professional athlete. Written and directed by Avery, the film will tell this story through local talent, including actors, filmmakers, musicians, singers, poets, painters, and more. “Student Athlete” explores how people can use their platform to influence positive change, specifically dealing with community and law enforcement relations.
Alicia Redmond | Rooted In Love: The Recultivation of Lincoln Heights – A Historic Black Community
“The Village of Lincoln Heights” is a short film documenting the first self-governing African American community north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Through a captivating exploration using archival photos, film footage from bygone eras, and contemporary recordings, this documentary aims to illuminate the remarkable journey of the Lincoln Heights community. The film will include interviews with current residents and city officials and will delve into the challenges, uncertainties, and truths that shape inhabitants’ daily lives.
Doug Hilson | Strokes: Inspiring the Next Generation to Paint Their Truth
“Strokes” is a 75-minute film about encouraging the young to pursue their passions in art. Featuring the work of Cincinnati artists, the film will highlight the uniqueness of Cincinnati’s arts through a cultural lens, conveying how past and contemporary art are connected to truth.
Markus Cook | The Coming Sleep
“The Coming Sleep” is a 90-minute feature film about a Black scientist and professor seeking funding to build a machine that will separate her body from her soul. Secretly, she hopes the process will reunite her with her late husband and mother. The film explores grief, trauma, and our desire to explain the unexplainable. It will be shot in downtown Cincinnati, Northside, and Newport, KY.
Sarah Rodriguez | PatchWORK
“PatchWORK” is a large-scale paper collage that combines the work of community members created through a four-part workshop series. Focusing on the west side neighborhoods of Price Hill, Sedamsville, Riverside, Sayler Park, Delhi Township, and Westwood/Cheviot, the final collage incorporates imagery from the neighborhoods that make them unique.
Ingrid Woode | Be Still
“Be Still” is a multimedia portrait series highlighting accountability in mental and emotional health. To spark mental and emotional health dialogue, the series will include portraits of 7-10 Cincinnatians. It will consist of photographic portraits, video portraits, 3D portraits in virtual reality, and a musical score.
Lisa Merida-Paytes | Flow: Flux
Inspired by the artist’s Hispanic cultural heritage, “Flow: Flux” is a collaborative, woven installation. Made from studio work, it incorporates paper elements constructed by the community in artist-led workshops. The project will combine innovative materials and processes and embrace the possibilities of alternative installation strategies, challenging the plinth and pedestal.
Emily Hanako Momohara | Mother’s Tongue
“Mother’s Tongue” is a three-piece exhibition integrating traditional Japanese language with contemporary American landscapes, illuminating a rarely discussed diasporic middle ground. Each piece takes the form of photographic sculptures wrapped in photographs of American landscapes that share characteristics of Japan. The works explore the deconstruction and forgetting of traditional language, contrasting it with the construction of contemporary identity. Viewers will contemplate the intricacies of the artwork and relate it to their reflections on language and place.
Asha the Artist | Bodies in Flux: Exploring Reproductive Choice Through Art and Words
“Bodies in Flux” is an exhibition of mixed media sculptures accompanied by poems or short stories nurturing communal empathy for women and nonbinary people’s reproductive rights. This project harnesses the innovative spirit of Fluxus artists to challenge conventional notions of art’s role in connecting people, inspired by the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022.
Noel Maghathe | Rooted in the Land
Rooted in the Land is an intricate blend of live performance and sculptural art that narrates the Palestinian diasporic experience. After creating a bronzed-sculpture garden landscape of plants that can grow both in Palestine and Ohio, Maghathe will choreograph a performance based on their lived experience in the diaspora. The performance will intertwine history, culture, and the innate human connection to the Earth.
Faith Marie | HeartSpace Poetry Project
The HeartSpace Poetry Project will be a digital poetry archive created through an 8-week writing program for high school girls ages 14 – 18. The project will empower young minds to express themselves, engage with their community, and foster an understanding of place, shared experiences, and identity.
Live Performance Events
Sunday, July 14 | 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. | The Carnegie
Margaret Tung | Going Beyond Traditional Classical Music: Innovative Music for Horn
“Going Beyond Traditional Classical Music: Innovative Music for Horn” is an audio recording of solo and chamber pieces from underrepresented composers in the Black and Brown communities. These composers include Latina composer Alice Gomez and Black composer Jeffrey Scott. Tung will record the works with diverse chamber ensembles in the Cincinnati area.
tt stern-enzi | Stepping In (To Fatherhood)
“Stepping In (To Fatherhood)” is a series of essays documenting the artist’s history as a Black man raised in a single-parent household. Through an examination of Fatherhood, the essays will explore the importance of familial connections and conversations that address health-related issues around access to information and healthier outcomes.
K.A. Simpson | FLIPd: Cincinnati, Ohio’s Historic Places, Spaces, Told through African American Stories
“FLIPd” is a non-fiction chapter book that explores the historic places and spaces of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Utilizing narrative storytelling of the region’s Black community, these true stories reframe our understanding of standard historic places that often overlook the African American perspective of historic places and spaces.
Anupama Mirle | DOR (Strings)
“DOR” is a theatrical, classical Indian dance performance about a young, unmarriable widow with a five-year-old daughter who decides to leave India. Following a string of events, she lands in the United States. Celebrating women’s sensuality, maternal instinct, revenge when wronged, determination, and peace, the performance also questions traditions that bind Indian women.
Jori An Cotton | Voices of Healing: Connecting Back to Our Inner Girl and Finding Our Joy and Freedom
“Voices of Healing” is a sensory-experience exhibition that uses interviews, photography, music, poetry, and more to convey the colorful ways Black Women discover, experience, and express joy. The work aims to bridge cultural gaps and inspire all people to discover their own joy, creating a community of people whose joy permeates the freedom to be oneself.
Chaya J. | In My Mind
“In My Mind” will be a six-track EP recording accompanied by visuals that animate the music’s words and tone and document the recording and writing process. As the title suggests, the album will focus on issues related to mental health, the struggles of the poor and working class, and the societal power structures that contribute to these challenges.
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The Truth & Innovation Artist Showcase images provided by Artswave and created by The Voice of Black Cincinnati
