DEAR BLACK FUTURE

Large Scale photography featuring Ethnographic documentation of photos, a film installation, and a community engagement sculpture that acts as a reliquary for community letters to the future. DEAR BLACK FUTURE 6 NEWS (click here)

In this exhibition, Marlon Hall worked with a host of local ethnographic creatives in Tulsa, OK to call and respond to the question: What if we honored Black History by inspiring a Black Future? 

“Dear Black Future” was an exhibition of photography, film and community engagement that honored the past of the black community by imagining its future. The entirety of the exhibition was an experiential letter in four words with images and stories captured at John Burroughs Elementary (the first school in Tulsa in integrate) on the day of a balloon release in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. The walls and floors of the Activity Hall became a window and a mirror. A mirror that reflected the beauty of Black excellence back to itself through the faces of children and an inclusive widow through which all people of every ethnic story could see and imagine the bounty of Black people’s contribution to the whole of human possibility.

This exhibition asked its viewers:

What if we leveraged the moment when people openly drew their attention to black excellence and achievement to celebrate the past by speaking words of manifestation to the future of Black Americans? 

Black history is beautiful. The present era of Black people would not exist without black history, and black presence powerfully broadens the sum total of human flourishing. Black History Month is a time portal that opens up the global consciousness of America every February. The nation reaches through time to highlight the past contributions of black historical figures. Typically when this time portal opens up, we engage it with our faces to the past and our heels to the future. What would happen if we turned around to face the future as a way to honor the past? This exhibition is an experiential letter to the future driven by ethnographic images taken at John Burroughs Elementary with audio-narratives, and programs that invited the visitors to write a “Four Word Letter” to the future of the black community with a verb, noun, a-preposition, and a noun.