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Lavett Ballard’s exhibit, “Stories My Grandmother Told Me,” is celebrating Black History Month and Women’s History Month at the same time.

The exhibit, which is running at the Community Folk Art Center until March 20, features images of Black women like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and Sarah Baartman along with other unidentified women. “Stories My Grandmother Told Me” tells the stories of Ballard’s family while reflecting the past and present issues impacting Black people.

“This is like a two-for-one because she is, and a lot of the work that is present in this exhibit is celebrating women,” said Tanisha Jackson, the executive director of CFAC. “The very title ‘Stories My Grandmother Told Me’ centralizes the significance of women telling their stories.”

“Stories My Grandmother Told Me,” which CFAC planned to exhibit in person last March, is filled with pieces of aged wood topped with collaged photos, paint, oil pastels and metallic foils. Visitors can view the exhibit in person by appointment or virtually.

The exhibit also starts off the center’s “Black Art Speak” series, a short film series highlighting contemporary Black artists in Syracuse and throughout the country. The Central New York Community Foundation provided a grant to support the series.

For Ballard, a New Jersey-based artist, the inspiration for the pieces in the exhibit comes from female historians in her family, especially her maternal grandmother. The stories she heard as a child also taught her about Black history, which she represents through images of notable historical figures or moments in her art pieces. Ballard remembers reading about events in history such as the Tulsa Race Massacre but thought about them in the context of her family history.

Ballard celebrates themes of womanhood in her work. Courtesy of Tanisha Jackson

“You would hear these stories interwoven with your own family history. And that is the way I kind of approach my own work in general,” Ballard said. “That was why I decided on this as the title for this exhibit.”

Not only does she celebrate heroes and themes of womanhood in her work, but also memoralizes victims of racism. One installation Ballard created throughout 2020, “The Quarantine Chronicles,” shows images of Black Lives Matter protests and women such as Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland. Police in Louisville, Kentucky, shot and killed Taylor in her apartment in March 2020. In 2015, Bland was found dead in a Texas jail cell following a forceful arrest for a traffic stop.

Ballard hopes that all visitors, regardless of gender or race, find a way to connect with her pieces. She said learning the stories of Black people will hopefully help others understand the experiences of her members of her community and will help them become better allies.

“I tried to make people see themselves in the work,” she said. “You know, you may not have ever been a little brown girl. But you’ve gone to school with brown girls, and it makes you think, ‘This what they’re thinking, that they wish they could be considered better.’”

Dianne Smith, Ballard’s thesis adviser at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, said exhibits like Ballard’s are important for normalizing “the everyday lives of every life of Blackness.” She thinks that in images presented in the art community and the media, the idea of being Black and having those experiences is not normalized the way “whiteness” is.

“To see an exhibition like this normalizes the fact that we are breathing, thinking, living human beings as well that have normal everyday experiences,” Smith said. “We have the same needs and wants as everyone else to document and tell stories of our past and connect them to our future.

Jackson said the exhibition has gained more attention than some of the center’s previous exhibitions before COVID-19, which she thinks is because people want to have some connectivity in a time where individuals are advised to be isolated from one another.

Ballard, on the other hand, is happy with the overall final product but wishes visitors didn’t have to make an appointment to come in and enjoy her work. She said that overall, her family is happy to see their stories told through her art.

“They’re very proud of me,” Ballard said. “They are the ones who supplied the story.”

Published on March 2, 2021 at 11:46 pm

Contact Abby: akweiss@syr.edu | @abbyweiss_21