Soft jazz music welcomed a few dozen guests into the bright, large windowed space at Blanc Gallery in Bronzeville, 4445 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr., on June 20.
Blanc Gallery is currently showing Detroit-based multimedia artist Sabrina Nelson’s solo show, “Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin,” and it was open to the public for a night of poetry and discussion. The show includes portraits and various multimedia elements, including an augmented reality experience.
“In the work that you see here, I’m demonstrating what I feel Baldwin feels like in his moments of joy, and also his moments of rest, and his moments of moving with grace beyond his grief,” Nelson said.
James Baldwin was a writer and voice of the civil rights movement. He was born in New York in 1924, and lived for much of his life abroad, away from the racism and homophobia he experienced in the U.S.
Nelson immersed herself in the work and life of James Baldwin when she attended a Baldwin conference in Paris in 2016, according to a Blanc press release for the show.
The night’s program included a panel discussion between Nelson, curator Ashara Ekundayo and poet laureates avery r. young and jessica Care moore. Local poets also read passages they chose from Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” a novel about an American man wrestling with his relationships with other men while he was living in Paris.
Ekundayo emphasized that Baldwin’s impact may have been greater on the civil rights movement—and may be more well-known overall—had he not been an out and vocal queer man.
“I’m curious if we don’t honor him the way we need to because he was queer [and] because he was Black,” Ekundayo said. “I’m interested in how his outspokenness would be more allowed in this queer moment.
Poet laureates avery r. young and jessica Care moore recited some of their own poems after the panel.
Organizers also encouraged every audience member to select a short passage from “Giovanni’s Room,” repeatedly passing a fishbowl filled with folded slips of paper around the circle to ensure all had a chance to participate in the activation.
With these slips, everybody conducted a sound experiment together. Over the course of one minute, each person read their selected passage at the same time, creating a cacophony of poetry. The words fell over each other, but no one voice carried above the rest—the resulting sound was almost musical in its rumbling, and acted as a tribute and celebration of the writer leading up to what would have been his 100th birthday on August 2.
The event centered on both poetry and visual art as equal and complementary.
“I can draw it, but I don’t always have the words, and that’s why these [poets] are my friends,” Nelson said.
The show is on view through June 29.