Saint Strivers. © Alanna Airitam, courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.
Saint Nicholas © Alanna Airitam, courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.
Native New Yorker Alanna Airitam understands the impact of place as it informs our sense of what is possible. Within the history of Western Art is a vast sense of absence and exclusion. Visibility and representation occurs for a select few the powerful and wealthy wished to venerate, often propagating distorted, dissembling narratives they pawn off as history.
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After considering the limited spaces offered to Black folk in Western art, both on the walls and in offices, Airitam recognized a path for herself, one she began to pursue without knowing where it would take her. Her understanding of the human spirit found a natural home in portraiture, and as she continued to photograph, a story revealed itself.
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In The Golden Age, Airitam weaves a tale of two cities exchanging ideas over the centuries, reuniting Old and New Amsterdam – Haarlem and Harlem, to be exact. It’s not small coincidence that City of New York was founded by the Dutch during their seventeenth-century Renaissance – in a real estate swindle, no less.
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Fast forward three centuries, and the Harlem Renaissance is in full bloom as the nation’s greatest mass migration takes place over a period of 70 years, with Black folks fleeing the South following the hell of Reconstruction. For decades, Harlem sparkled uptown, the crown jewel in the city that never slept.
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But the government-sponsored plague of benign neglect helped destabilize the city, making it ripe for the plagues of crack, AIDS, and gentrification over the past 50 years. Yet, it is exactly these changes that have stirred Aitiram into action, calling forth a desire not only to honor the grandeur of yore but to inspire a new generation to carry forward a legacy that continues to reveal profound depths of knowledge, wisdom, truth, beauty, passion, and majesty.
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Airitam’s photographs from The Golden Age will be on view in How do you see me? at Catherine Edeman Gallery, Chicago, from September 7 – October 27, 2018. Here, the artist shares experiences and insights she has gathered along the way.
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Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot
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Saint Madison © Alanna Airitam, courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.