| GAF 2022 | Student Leadership Team | Artists | Events | Installation Views |
Home is In the Stories: A Visual Memorial to Black Bed Stuy
Click here to view Kira’s Series
STATEMENT:
I am an artist, a storyteller, and a collaborator. I join people, specifically Black people, in the telling of their stories, working with them to record the rich and varied reality of living in a diaspora. Growing up as a Black queer woman in the United States, I have experienced firsthand how members of an African diaspora have made a home in the face of systemic tactics of disempowerment and pervasive racism. Along with concepts of home, my art explores safety, community, and perception through visual media and stories. The work serves to humanize and normalize the lived experiences of those who are often objectified. The photographs I make and the stories I record are in contribution to longstanding memory-work traditions that make sense of the present and construct a new future––one in which we all belong.
The portraits and quotes featured here are collected from my conversations with people living in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York (the colonized land of the Lenape people). In these conversations, we explore their experiences and notions of home. We spoke about the importance of storytelling and documentation within the Black community. Photography is a vessel through which their stories can be seen, and I aim to convey them as truthfully as possible. Together, we preserve stories of survival, community-building, and joy in a place an ocean away from our ancestors.
Portraiture is often a very personal act made public. With this in mind, and in the spirit of collaboration, every participant pictured here has consented to share both their image and words publicly. As a portraitist, I am a part of the photographic process––my influence is not absent from the image itself. My hope for the viewer as they read strangers’ words and look into their faces is that they consider their participation as well. Maybe they will leave here as something other than strangers, finding a home in the stories as I have.
BIO:
Kira Joy Williams (she/her) is an artist, storyteller, and community builder based in Brooklyn, NY on occupied Lenape land. Kira strives to contribute positively to the existing visual representation of Black people in the U.S. by creating archival materials in collaboration with the very people being represented. Through photographs and interviews with participants, she explores the ways members of the African diaspora make a home in the face of systemic disempowerment and pervasive racism. Along with concepts of diasporic home, Kira’s art explores notions of safety, community, and belonging through visual media and stories. Her photographs and recorded histories exist in the wake of longstanding memory-work traditions that make sense of the present and construct a new future––one in which we all belong. Kira is currently a member of Black Women Photographers. She believes wholeheartedly in the power of art, abundance, and mutual aid, and in her plant babies.
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