Displayed in hale Hall and Thompson Library’s Special Collections Gallery, The “Black Joy” art exhibit selected art from 12 local artists that uplift Black culture and celebrate the joy in Blackness. Credit: Zachary Rilley | Photo Editor

Through the lens of three local artists, joy can be found in many common aspects of Black culture.

The “Black Joy” art exhibit, on display in the Frank W. Hale Jr. Black Cultural Center and Thompson Library’s Special Collections Gallery, selected art from 12 local artists that uplift Black culture and celebrate the joy in Blackness. According to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion website, the exhibit comes after the Black Joy: Expansive, Unfiltered, Unapologetic exhibition that highlights the peaks of the Black Lives Matter movement created in August.

Nzuri McCree, a third-year in landscape architecture and featured artist, said for her, joy can be found in the cultural habits of Black familial bonds and childhood upbringings.

McCree’s acrylic painting, on display in the Hale Center, features her baby cousin, Ava L. Garner, who is one of the first grandchildren in her family. McCree said building families is a core value within Black culture and seeing new generations grow is of utmost importance to elder family members.

“Personally for me, many of my family members never got to see their children grow up,” McCree said. “That being said, my granddad was able to see his baby’s baby take her first steps before he died.”

McCree said she finds joy in the legacy Black people, like her grandfather, leave with their families and how the community comes together to help take care of children. She said she aims to express this joy in her art.

“They always say it takes a village to raise a child,” McCree said. “I feel like the Black community as a whole, you come together to raise our children. There’s something very beautiful about that.”

McCree said the joy in life also comes from little moments within daily struggles. She said she encourages students to seek out those moments even during painful times.

“Life can be very black and white sometimes, but then there’s those things that make it worthwhile,” McCree said.

While happiness for McCree means staying true to your inner child, artist Afua Dankwah-Boakye said she defines joy within beauty.

Boakye, a fourth-year in health science, has two pieces on display — a ceramic piece in Thompson and an acrylic painting in the Hale Center. She said both of her pieces exhibit Black women covered in gold to connect her Ghanaian roots with her ideals of beauty.

“The history behind Ghana, it’s one of the countries where our main resource is gold,” Boakye said. “It also has to do with Black beauty being priceless.”

Boakye said it’s important to exemplify the joy of Black female beauty for young girls, as it is often sexualized in the media, and she encourages Black students to see the beauty within themselves and the joy that comes with it.

“I feel like a lot of Black girls struggle with finding beauty in themselves,” Boakye said. “Let’s put it on a pedestal as a form of art.”

Annie Chrissy Burley, local visual artist and resident of the Culture Arts Center, said joy often comes from struggle, which is something the Black community is all too familiar with in relation to the continuous fight for racial equity, she said.

Burley said her art on display, which is an animation based on the famous Michelangelo painting “The Creation of Adam,” is a reflection of her faith, which she said guides her to create and understand that struggle is often a necessity for joy.

“Ironically, in our world, we get happiness conflated with joy,” Burley said. “In the Bible, joy is always correlated with suffering.”

McCree, like Boakye, said she hopes, through her art, students will see the child within themselves and reflect on what joy means to them.

“I hope that when you look at my art you remember that you are a child,” McCree said. “You are always going to be learning something new. Listen to your inner child, take care of yourself.”