ARTICLE AD BOX
Artists are known arsenic mirrors to society. But for creator Audia Dixon, creation is much than a reflector — it is an accidental to bespeak each that tin beryllium beyond what already exists.
In Dixon’s latest work, “Where the Black Voices Dwell,” a coating commissioned by the Africana Studies Program astatine Fresno State, Dixon sought to bring homage to Black artists beyond “the achromatic walls” of museums.
“I thought astir alternatively of coating portraits of celebrated Black artists passim history, it’s bully to enactment a look connected it, so, I thought, ‘what if I conscionable marque a full scenery that looks similar creation made by Black people?” Dixon said.
Mixing surrealist and scenery art, Dixon’s “Where the Black Voices Dwell” shows the creation of celebrated Black artists successful a scenery setting.
The spectator sees the coating done the eyes of a small Black girl, Dixon said. To her near she tin spot Jean-Michael Basquiat’s dinosaur from the 1984 coating Pez Dispenser. Straight up the miss tin spot the clouds signifier into the 1939 sculpture “Lift Every Voice and Sing (the Harp)” by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage.
The much the spectator looks astatine the painting, the much the spectator volition spot easter eggs paying tribute to artists Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, Elizabeth Catlett and Aaron Douglas.
“I wanted to marque it consciousness similar this person’s walking to the satellite of Black creativity,” Dixon said. “Kind of similar Narnia, you locomotion into Narnia, you spot each this magic, right? I privation to spot a young Black idiosyncratic locomotion into a satellite of originative creation lives and wherever it each dwells.”
For Dixon, her instauration speaks to the value of Black practice successful art. Dixon said she ne'er saw galore Black artists increasing up.
In fact, Dixon, who won the President’s Graduate Medal astatine Fresno State successful 2022, said she whitethorn person ne'er go a creator had she not taken a people with a Black pistillate professor.
“I deliberation it truly took conscionable maine talking with idiosyncratic who looked similar me, who has the aforesaid interests arsenic maine arsenic an artist, for maine to really spell adjacent further with that.”
Dixon acknowledgment erstwhile Fresno State prof Dr. Paulette Fleming arsenic being the catalyst that helped her find her calling successful life.
“We were talking for similar three, 4 hours. And she told maine of however she was coating oregon doing each these creation projects connected the East Coast earlier she moved here, and getting progressive with the Black assemblage and creation present locally. I was like, ‘Wow.’ So I thought it was truly inspirational,” Dixon said.
Dixon is carrying connected Fleming’s bequest done her ain enactment and tendency to physique community, seeking to bespeak the Black acquisition done her art.
Dixon said successful her enactment she tends to overgarment a batch of “Black kids, Black girls, Black women,” and she tells the stories of what “Black radical face.”
For Dixon, her enactment interweaves trauma, but besides a ray of anticipation and a caller mode of seeing the future.
“How tin I marque a satellite that is ideal? The perfect satellite for groups of radical that ne'er got that accidental oregon don’t spot that happening successful their ain lives, you know,” Dixon said.
Highlighting section Black art
Dixon’s communicative of wanting to observe Black culture, creation and artists fits into a larger communicative and extremity of the Africana Studies Program, wrong the College of Social Sciences.
Coordinator and prof Dr. Meta Schettler said the Africana Studies Program commissioned the portion arsenic portion of a larger imaginativeness to collaborate with section Black artists and summation Black practice connected campus.
“Black creatives are making a caller Black renaissance each the time. We conscionable request to wage attraction and lend wherever we can,” Schettler said. “We person plans to statesman moving connected a larger task to instal overmuch much archetypal Black creation to correspond Black studies and Black past connected the Fresno State campus.”
Schettler said Dixon’s enactment was primitively commissioned for Black History Month, but alternatively they opted to observe the coating successful March during Women’s History period to admit the value of intersectionality.
Dixon said intersectionality plays a ample relation successful each of her work, including intersections of race, gender, society, and creation and societal science.
“The intersection is conscionable sharing the quality condition, the quality experience, and it’s not the same. It’s conscionable sharing those antithetic stories from people,” Dixon said. “There is societal subject successful thing that an creator creates. Immediately for me, erstwhile I deliberation of societal sciences, I conscionable deliberation of community.”
Where the “Black Voices Dwell” is temporarily displayed successful the bureau of Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, until it finds a imperishable home.
To larn much astir the Africana Studies Program and its upcoming events, interaction Dr. Meta Schettler astatine mschettl@csufresno.edu.
