In the spring of 2019, Nia June found herself in the living room of a home in Windsor Mill. She described it as “old-school.” There were many pictures on the walls and others lined the tables. There was plastic covering on the matching vintage couches. The Baltimore poet was there for work, though it didn’t feel like it.

“It felt like home,” says June, pictured second from left, who spent the day listening to stories from the three generations of Black women who resided there: Najah Johnson; her daughter, Indigo; and her grandmother, Ethel Zimmerman. “Seeing the way her grandchild and great-grandchild just folded to her—they sat at her feet, they loved her so much, and just took care of her. It was beautiful.”

Zimmerman died last January, at 86 years old, but she will now live on in the permanent collection of The Baltimore Museum of Art. June’s debut film, A Black Girl’s Country, inspired by her poem of the same name, was recently acquired by the BMA as part of its new initiative to obtain more works by artists of color and those with ties to Baltimore.

It all started with a poem that June wrote as a student at Towson University in 2018. As the only Black woman in her poetry class, she felt frustrated and out of place, with her work constantly misunderstood by her classmates, many of whom were white men. She wrote her feelings into a poem that she now describes as a “home for Black women.”

The short film based on that poem, written and directed with local cinematographer Kirby Griffin, right, and musician APoetNamedNate, left, features more than 50 Black women and men set to the backdrop of Charm City, with June’s words echoing in the background.

“In person, Nia is this very delicate, soft-spoken woman, and then you see her onstage and it’s just like pure fire,” says Griffin, who filmed all the video footage, while APoetNamedNate created the music to accompany June’s poem. Together, their goal was to celebrate Baltimore’s Black community.

“Representation was really important to us,” says June, who is now an arts educator herself. “I’ve had a lot of students who are young Black girls tell me that they watch the film every morning to start their day and make them feel good. A lot of Black women have told me they cried, or dads have said they show it to their daughters.”

The BMA first interacted with the film during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was showcased in the “Screening Room,” a virtual space where visitors could quench their thirst for local artwork while the museum’s doors remained closed, quickly becoming a fan favorite.

“This is probably one of the best things that happened to us last year,” says chief curator Asma Naeem. “This work is a portrait of so many incredibly moving and powerful and inspiring people.”

That includes Sharayna Ashanti Christmas (second from right) the founder of Necessary Tomorrows, whose creative consulting branch helped the BMA acquire the film.

“Black artists need to know that they have someone that can advocate on their behalf,” says Christmas, whose radical multimedia platform works to promote art by creatives of color, helping to raise more than $5,000 in emergency relief funding for Black artists in 2020. “They also need to learn how to advocate for themselves.”

Per June’s wishes, the film is still available for free on YouTube, where it has amassed more than 8,000 views. But as it’s one of the first films by a local Black artist to join the BMA’s collection, Christmas see it as a landmark.

“It’s being acquired in the permanent collection of a prestigious museum located in Baltimore and the work is by three artists that are from Baltimore and it’s about Black women,” she says. “I don’t think it gets any more historic than that.”

For the Baltimore arts community, artist, choreographer, and youth mentor Sharayna Christmas has been a steady force in an otherwise static year.

Over time, many have come to know her as the founder of Muse 360 Arts, the multifaceted youth arts program she launched in 2004, as well as, more recently, Necessary Tomorrows, the self-described “radical multimedia arts platform” established in 2017. But in 2020, she truly cemented her role as a cultural leader in the face of COVID-19.

As the pandemic’s closure of arts spaces and cancellation of exhibitions and performances threatened the livelihoods of her fellow Black artists, Christmas launched an emergency relief fund in March, inspired by Black women in the Reconstruction Era who would create community funds their neighbors could draw from, both for enterprise and help during hard times.

“I’ve always wanted to start a fund for Black philanthropic endeavors that is run by us, for us, with no barriers,” says Christmas. “Black radical investment is very, very important. It’s important for people to see that you can do it. I was doing it in the spirit of my ancestors.”

Through Necessary Tomorrows, which also works to center Black artists, her efforts helped raise more than $5,000 from local investors, including herself, to distribute to more than 45 creatives. The fund also amplified the financial strain experienced by Black artists in Baltimore, inspiring other organizations, like the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, to establish their own fundraisers for creatives as well.

 

“BLACK RADICAL INVESTMENT IS VERY, VERY IMPORTANT…I [DO] IT IN THE SPIRIT OF MY ANCESTORS.”

 

In the months since, Christmas has continued her work through Muse 360, carrying on her travel-based arts education program, New Generation Scholars, and rebranded Necessary Tomorrows with a fresh design and expanded mission statement.

On view January 1, 2021, its new virtual exhibition, Immaterial Souls, will feature works by the likes of multidisciplinary artist Glenford Nunez, who also helped her with the website’s redesign, as well as filmmaker Gyasi Mitchell and photographer Kirby Griffin. Each available for sale, these powerful paintings, portraits, and films—or what she calls “immortal moments”—were inspired by reflections on the spiritual realm.

“The soul is what lives within us,” says Christmas, noting that the exhibit urges viewers to contemplate both what is and what is not seen. “[These works are] definitely dealing with the idea that Black people are one with spirit, that we transform and reform and are reborn, and our images are not one in the same. When you think about a crescent moon, you only see one part of the shape, but there’s so much more.”

Looking ahead, Christmas aims to embody that sentiment for others—and herself. The current group exhibit is a launching point, of sorts, for Christmas’ solo show, Strwbrrys + Gnpwdr, created in collaboration with Griffin and previewed in Immaterial Souls. Debuting later in January, the exhibition features dynamic works that touch on sensuality, sexuality, and death while incorporating sound and sight.

“In the next year, I hope to use my platform to continue to provide resources for artists to gain autonomy,” says Christmas. “But also Necessary Tomorrows is a platform for me to be expressive and redefine curating. What does it mean to create an artistic experience? Is it just an exhibition, or is it performance? Is it dance? Is it film? Is it a garden in the back? That’s what I’m going to be challenging myself with—the constant redefinition of what this all means.”

Though a trained choreographer and artist, Sharayna Christmas first describes herself as an “activist and a nurturer” who feels compelled to continue a longstanding tradition of nurturing activism here in Baltimore. The exhibitions and initiatives that she collaboratively curates through her arts collective Necessary Tomorrowsare done with the intention of fusing art and experiential learning environments to uplift and inspire the city’s underserved communities.

In her latest exhibit, inspired by the activism of her own mother, the womanist movement, and the mentorship of elders, Christmas continues the work of highlighting the lives and legacies of black women, teaming with Kibibi Ajanku, curator-in-residence at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Museum, to launch We Choose, now on view in the museum’s Bearman Gallery in Fells Point through September 27.

“A lot of the artists that I work with have never been in an exhibition,” says Christmas. “I understand that I was once given an opportunity [and] I try to offer that same kind of support with my programming and the exhibitions that I curate.”

A group exhibition, We Choose showcases multimedia installations, oil and acrylic paintings, textiles, glassworks, photography, and assemblage from a dozen emerging artists whose work elicits distinct perspectives about black womanhood.

“I appreciate that when black women are in the same room, there are so many things that can happen; collaborations, rebirth,” says Christmas. “So here we are bringing together in a different capacity a new show that allows artists to define what ‘We Choose’ means for themselves.”

Those definitions are myriad and complex. In Kayla Morgan’s three-dimensional installation, Rosa The Riveter, the mixed-media artist reimagines the iconic World War I propaganda caricature of a similar name as a black hand that squeezes the muscles of a flexed forearm. The sculpture is set within a frame that is covered in ripped black and red bandanas, raising questions about racial disparities surrounding labor, as well as stereotypes about black and Latinx women’s unflinching strength and seeming invulnerability.

Meanwhile, Jazmine Johnson’s untitled photography installation, unpacks the ways black women’s bodies have historically been leveraged, commoditized, and sacrificed for others’ gain or civil liberties. Each photograph is named for a prominent writer, scholar, or activist, including Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston, and Maya Angelou. Each depiction is charged with images of black women in the throes of protest and overlaid with text from radical quotes by each woman.

April Daniel Lewis’ black-and-white short film, Black Wash, is installed at the center of Johnson’s photographs. In it, a woman appears to be washing black paint or ink from her hands and arms, but upon closer review, the near 6-minute film is playing in reverse—the woman is washing the black onto her skin, rather than removing it. Lewis’s clever and satirical film flips racist tropes and mythologies that have likened melanin with dirt, and dark complexions with ugliness.

Queen, a subtle acrylic painting from a larger series by Victoria Rouse, turns its attention toward the discrimination that black women with natural hair face in conservative settings. The back of a head full of dreadlocks is surrounded by an ornate golden motif. Rouse’s subject does not confront the gaze of the viewer. Rather, we, the viewers, are confronted by their hair, a metaphoric crown.

We Choose is a small but compelling exhibition that gives a platform to rarely exhibited works by a collection of emerging artists. But the goal of this collection is larger than simply showcasing local art.

“Particularly for the artists, I want people to say, this is how I see myself, and I am sharing that with you without judgement,” says Christmas. “If black women can continue to drop the curtain and see themselves outside of an exhibition, in their own space, in their own mind, in their own spirituality, that would be enough for me.”