'We Believed in the Sun' open at OK Contemporary through August, Summer camps available

Oklahoma Contemporary’s newest exhibition, We Believed in the Sun, celebrates the enduring legacy of the Civil Rights movement in Oklahoma City. The exhibition, which opened in the Mary LeFlore Clements Oklahoma Gallery on May 6, features the work of Ron Tarver, an Oklahoma-born, nationally recognized artist and recent awardee of the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in photography, and Ebony Iman Dallas, an emerging artist based in Oklahoma City. Both artists share their powerful, difficult and liberating personal narratives of the Black experience in Oklahoma through their work. 

The title of the exhibition was pulled from a quote given by Civil Rights leader and Oklahoman, Clara Luper. Clara’s presence as an Oklahoman educator and pioneering leader of the American Civil Rights movement offers a poignant introduction to the exhibition’s content. The full quote exists on wall at the entry of the gallery space, providing an opportunity for reflection as each visitor arrives in the space.

“If you’re going to be a part of the community, you have to know the community,” said the exhibition’s co-curator, Pablo Barrera. “Oklahomans are complicated. Unfortunately, we are a part of a national narrative that’s trying to oversimplify things.” This exhibition allows the complexity of these stories to exist while appreciating and making room for the wide range of emotions felt with the individual and collective experiences of our community.

“If the point is to give room for these voices, we must be willing to invite the whole story,” said Barrera. “Community is the best lens to realize how complicated these stories are.” The idea for this exhibition began before Oklahoma Contemporary moved from its location at the fairgrounds. The final exhibition hosted in their previous location was titled Oklahoma is Black and shared a similar narrative. It was the first solo exhibition in Oklahoma of artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, who is internationally known for her work including street art project Stop Telling Women to Smile. Fazlalizadeh’s exhibition, along with Barrera's drive through Tulsa when moving for his new role in Oklahoma, helped inspire and motivate his contributions to the curation of We Believed in the Sun. Combined with the critical insight of co-curator Christina Beatty, the exhibition was able to achieve its vision of addressing Black Oklahoman’s intergenerational struggle for equality. Though the exhibition was not created in response to the events of the past year, it comes at a time when the conversation of the Black experience in the United States has been already brought to the forefront with the centennial commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre and significant momentum generated by civil rights and social activists across our nation.

When Ebony Iman Dallas and Ron Tarver were chosen for the exhibition, they were intentional about working collaboratively to create individual works that would fit well together in the space. The exhibition provided an opportunity for each artist to investigate and expand on their unique styles.

Some of Dallas’s work is unlike anything she’s previously created. In this exhibition, she experimented with digital components and layers of material not seen previously. In addition to her newer styles of work, her vibrant paintings fill the room with rich hues, evoking a sense of pride and confidence.

Ron Tarver’s work is composed of photographs taken by his father in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma during Jim Crow, which he has repurposed and recomposed into new pieces. Tarver's compositions are created by taking photos of scenes he physically lays out and creates from multiple prints of his father’s photographs.

Each piece within the exhibition holds an important personal story, tied to a greater picture behind the lived experiences of Black individuals in Oklahoma. According to the notes in the exhibition pamphlet, “Oklahoma once boasted over 50 Black towns, more than any other state in the nation. Oklahoma City’s Deep Deuce developed because of segregation ordinances restricting where Black residents could live.” During the time when Tarver’s father was taking photographs, Black men were not exhibiting work in art museums and galleries. Tarver’s inclusion of his father’s photography allows his legacy to live on and exist in a space where it once was excluded from.

Tarver shared, “This is the dream exhibition for this particular body of work…I feel so honored and grateful to have the work shown here. Hopefully, it will be a launchpad to speak to broader issues on a national level.”

One of Tarver’s pieces, titled Community, is positioned in the window of the gallery, overlooking the Deep Deuce district. Barrera shared, Deep Deuce “was just as significant to the presence of Black Oklahomans in OKC as the Greenwood district was to Black Oklahomans in Tulsa.” Each of the nine photographs comprising the piece are ones his father took of members of the Black community in his hometown of Fort Gibson. Tarver replicated each photograph and adhered them to glass panes. In examining the faces of each individual, one is subtly reminded of their own family members and loved ones. There’s an element of nostalgia to the work, along with a sense of loss, hope, and impermanence. According to Barrera, the photographs are “showing the resilience of these fragile communities that remain vulnerable to this day.”

Ebony Iman Dallas’s father, Said Osman, was killed as a result of racially motivated hatred in 1980 while she was in her mother’s womb. The exact circumstances surrounding her father’s death are still unclear, and it was not until Dallas was an adult when she learned how her father died. One of her paintings displays the scene when she first realized the cause of her father’s death. It depicts her hugging someone who knew her father and his family. He recognized Dallas when she was out with her sister at a club in San Francisco in 2004. He approached her, sharing the truth behind her father’s death, which Dallas had been led to believe was suicide. Much of her work considers the difficulty she’s faced in coming to understand this horrid reality. Dallas expressed her sentiments surrounding the opening, “even putting the artwork in the gallery, there’s this ‘Oh, my gosh. People are going to ask me about this.’” Yet, Dallas is committed to sharing the story. She is currently working on a memoir that provides greater detail of her knowledge of her father's life, which she hopes to print the first editions of this summer. 

Pablo Barrera claims, “Love is really what allows her to talk about this…love is what sets her free.” Love, storytelling, and the importance of cross-generational strength are evident in Dallas’s work.

On Thursday, May 20, Tarver and Dallas gave an artist talk in the gallery space, which further explored their processes and reflected on the people, places, and stories that inspired the work. On June 3 from 7-8 p.m., there will be a performance by Jonathan Wei who will tell his own coming-of-age story of living through desegregation of the American South. Tickets are free and reservations can be made for the event on the Oklahoma Contemporary website.

Some of the final thoughts co-curator Pablo Barrera shared as he finished the walkthrough of the exhibition were “What would happen if we had a community where people didn’t have to grow up being activists? Where else would they invest their energy and talent?” As individuals visit this exhibition and acknowledge pieces of our difficult past, there is hope for a better future.

Make sure to reserve your free tickets this summer to see We Believed in the Sun before the exhibition closes on Aug. 9.

What else is happening at OK Contemporary this summer?

A series of Contemporary Camps offered June 1-Aug. 6 will provide opportunities for youth ages 5-12-years-old to participate in art-making and creative workshops throughout the summer. Students will learn how to create murals out of masking tape, sew inflatable paintings, enhance their drawing skills through a focus on composition and more.

“We are beyond thrilled to have the opportunity to offer in-person and digital youth camps this summer,” Christine Gibson, manager of youth and family programs at Oklahoma Contemporary, said. “At Oklahoma Contemporary, our camps focus on a wide range of contemporary art centered disciplines including sculpture, creative robotics, ceramics, cartoon design, animation and so much more. It’s my goal to offer our community exciting and experimental art making experiences that kids will love and talk about for years to come.”

Registration is limited to 10 students per camp session to ensure a safe and engaging environment for all participants and will close one week before each camp’s start date.

Members of OK Contemporary receive a 10% discount on Camp Contemporary for their children and scholarships are available through Google’s Art+Tech program.