Art exhibit celebrates contributions of Black people to history

A new art exhibit in Yellowknife is celebrating the contributions of Black people to history for Black History Month.

Black in History will feature 29 graphite pencil portraits by Inemesit Graham of prominent Black leaders, thinkers, authors, activists and artists from around the globe.

Graham said she began the series last year after noticing that many Black women were not being highlighted during Women’s History Month. She said the project expanded to include people of all genders.

“My desire for this show is to show how we all benefit from the contributions of Black people and these contributions had been erased,” she said.

“I’m going to highlight there is no progress in history without Black people and that there is no liberation in history without Black people.”

Graham said recognition of Black history is often rooted in trauma, but she wanted her exhibit to focus on the achievements of Black people that have positively impacted the world.

She pointed to Katherine Johnson, an American mathematician at Nasa whose calculations were critical to sending astronauts to the moon, and Gladys West, another American mathematician whose work contributed to the development of the Global Positioning System.

“All of us, regardless of how you’re racialized, benefit from the GPS system,” Graham said.

Other figures Graham highlighted include Marsha P Johnson, a transgender activist who participated in the Stonewall uprising that helped spark the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement and Pride, and Carrie Best, who founded one of the first newspapers in Nova Scotia and wrote about Black rights, including Viola Desmond’s fight against racial discrimination.

“Black women are a group of people that face systems of oppression, we face the patriarchy which suppresses us and reduces us to being female, we face racism, white supremacism, which suppresses us and reduces us to being Black,” she said.

“It’s important that we highlight that despite these systems, Black people are still contributing to history and to the present that affects us in very real ways today.”

Graham said her exhibit does not include references to “the first Black person” credited with doing anything. She noted that Neil Armstrong is referred to as the first man on the moon, not the first white man.

“When we remove race from it, the idea is that it’s white people that did it,” she said.

“I feel like this reinforces the idea of white superiority by erasing the contributions of Black people or acting as though they are less, they were the second to do anything.”

Many Black people were denied the right to exist in certain spaces, Graham said, or their contributions were minimized or not acknowledged in history.

Graham said she is a self-taught artist who has always enjoyed the arts and her portraits have been featured at galleries in Yellowknife in the past. She said she hasn’t done much art since her eldest son, who is now 13, was born, but began sketching again last year to get back into a creative space that brings her joy.

“I’m hoping that people just expand their understanding of history,” she said, “and they see a Black history that isn’t rooted in trauma, and they see the ways that Black people have contributed to all of our humanity.”

Black in History is a free exhibit that will open on February 24 at 6pm at the Yellowknife Racquet Club.