"Her Flowers" mural at The Valentine
Past and future meet in the present with new offerings by Richmond artists using their diverse tools and experiences to navigate the intersection of Black joy and reparations. One is “Her Flowers,” a free-standing mural commissioned by Afrikana Independent Film Festival founder and Creative Director Enjoli Moon, that’s housed in the garden of The Valentine museum. The four-sided mural, featuring gigantic, brightly colored flowers framed by a list of names, soberly honors the lives of 120 Black women who lost their lives to police brutality.
Moon says that during her preparation for this year’s festival, she was inspired by current events surrounding America’s reckoning with racism.
(From left) Contributing artists S. Ross Browne, Hamilton Glass, Amiri R-Keys, David Marion, Jason Ford, Silly Genius, Sir James Thornhill and Julian Greene
“There was so much conversation around Breonna Taylor’s death, government systems and violence,” she says.
Her response was to commission Black male artists to paint this mural, leaving space on one side for future honorees — women to be honored while they are still living. The artists include S. Ross Browne, Sir James Thornhill, Julian Greene, Hamilton Glass, Amiri R-Keys, David Marion, Jason Ford and Silly Genius. There is also a working door that suggests the possibility of future experiences and opportunities. During one visit, an offering, a real flower, had been laid at the base of one side of the mural.
The fifth annual Afrikana Independent Film Festival, like many other programs, went virtual this year, reaching some 2,000 viewers over digital platforms Sept. 17-20, and it included a screening of “Everyday Black Matter,” a remix of Chaz Barracks’ original short film “Don’t Touch My Hair RVA.” Barracks says the film is about more than hair and deals with “Black joy and reparations as a practice.”
“Everyday Black Matter” offers a nonlinear, sometimes poetic look at the ways everyday Black life is beautiful. In the film, ankle-length do-rags float like veils, a metaphor for the often over-exaggerated style that is at once protective of Black hair and a fashion statement that transcends age, gender and perceptions of otherness. The actors, dancers and community members who make up the cast move through familiar spaces in the city, shaking off the shackles of trauma, violence and the stress of code-switching. For Barracks, it is personal, from depictions of diversity to questions of sexual identity to the Caribbean lilt of his grandmother’s voice making her daily check-in. The film is an intriguing look into the mind of a creative artist who holds a Ph.D. in media, art and text, with a focus on Black cultural production and futurism.
The “Her Flowers” mural may be seen through the end of December, weather permitting. Barracks’ film may be accessed on a pay-what-you-wish basis, at afrikanafilmfestival.org. Images related to the film, including photography by DeAudrea “Sha” Rich, can be viewed outside the museum as well, with images displayed in the windows.
“There’s something to be said about our city,” Moon says of the mural, in that, “it’s here, in the garden of The Valentine museum, a place where, historically, Black people don’t take up a ton of space.”
