LOCAL
Ismael Lele, The Oklahoma Eagle
Panelists speak at NYU-Tulsa’s Black Portraitures event on Friday. Photo: Ismael Lele/The Eagle
In an effort to amplify Black arts, and culture, NYU-Tulsa on Friday hosted the 11th annual Black Portraitures international conference at OSU-Tulsa.
Created by Deborah Willis, Black Portraitures is a global event for intellectual, artistic and historical conversations.
“One of the most important aspects about this event, it is a storytelling moment, and the story that amplifies Black art, culture, literature and performance,” Willis said. “We have decided that we wanted to also include stories that are regional, but also international.”
Around 50 people attended the opening session of the day-long programming, which featured panels, presentations and Q&As.
Local artists Ashanti Chaplin, Kalup Linzy, Le’Andra LeSeur, Quraysh Ali Lansana and Yancey Red Corn took part in the Friday events along with Cheryl Finley, director of the Atlanta University Center Collective for the Study of Art History and Curatorial Studies.
In a panel titled “Reimagining Black Wall Street,” Noura Finley, a staff writer for The Forum, drew parallels between the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the Osage murders. She highlighted the lack of urgency from law enforcement that led to the organized murders of tribal citizens — known as the Osage Reign of Terror — and the racially motivated massacre in Greenwood in which law enforcement participated.
“These events created immense tensions between people of color and white America,” she said, “who with their uneven elongating power and influence, and national power of the legal system, leveraged legal, economic and sexual control over the livelihood of people of color, thus keeping the racial divide.”
Other panelists stressed the need to honor the victims of racial violence, the history of Greenwood and what was lost in 1921. M. Florine Démosthène, a New York-based artist, spoke of her time working in Tulsa to commemorate the massacre.
So, after moving to the city for the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, she created a mural on 101 E. Archer St. titled “Illumination on Archer” to do just that.
This year’s event also honored Michael D. Dinwiddie, an NYU theatre professor who died earlier this year. Dinwiddie, who spent time in Tulsa during his youth, was instrumental in bringing the event to Tulsa this year, Cheryl Finley said.
In past years, Black Portraitures held conferences in Venice, Paris, Florence, Johannesburg, Toronto, Cambridge, Newark and New York.
“We hope that the synergies that develop over this one day symposium are synergies that can continue to filter out throughout communities here in the city of Tulsa, but also even farther out into the state of Oklahoma,” Cheryl Finley said.
Black Portraitures plans to hold their next conference in Los Angeles in 2026, she told The Eagle.
