Kamau Ware, artist and founder of Black Gotham Experience, spoke at the Center for the Public Humanities Tuesday afternoon as part of his touring presentation highlighting his New York City-based company. Black Gotham Experience offers events like walking tours and produces graphic novels that emphasize erased stories to reveal how the African diaspora has been excluded from public understanding of New York City鈥檚 history.
Ware started the lecture by breaking down his personal background. Hailing from a family of academics and debaters, Ware grew up accustomed to discourse and stories, which inspired his love of books and graphic novels. The library became his 鈥渉appy place,鈥� he said, which naturally led to an interest in archives and artifacts.
Though influenced by his upbringing, Ware鈥檚 company鈥檚 mission was ultimately inspired by a question he received from a middle school student while working at the Tenement Museum in New York. 鈥淲here were the black people?鈥� she asked after patiently listening to the history he provided of immigrant Americans living in New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black Gotham Experience鈥檚 website explains.
In the talk, Ware discussed how he 鈥渂egan to realize that there鈥檚 actually a problem with the artifacts and a problem with the archives. 鈥� There are things that are unwritten,鈥� he said, adding that in the recording of history, stories lacked visual representations or accounts from diverse perspectives 鈥� the materials that historians and students gravitate toward. Ware founded Black Gotham Experience as a means of both discovering and revealing these untold histories.
The name 鈥淏lack Gotham Experience鈥� comes from Ware鈥檚 consideration of the dilemmas he works to make evident. He chose 鈥渂lack鈥� because 鈥渨hen I think about blackness I feel like that is something that connects people throughout the diaspora, whether they are from West Africa, the Caribbean, South America, North America,鈥� he said.
鈥淕otham鈥� goes beyond Ware鈥檚 interest in comic books. In his origin story, Batman resides in Gotham, a fictional city often likened to New York City. The cities have become synonymous in tellings of the story, but 鈥淣ew York City is not technically Gotham,鈥� Ware said. 鈥淕otham is those imaginary spaces,鈥� he added, noting that the Providence people encounter today is different from the historical Providence, which must be imagined to be understood, as so many stories have been lost over time. 鈥淭hose are Gothams 鈥� that collective unconscious history that is present 鈥� but that is not represented,鈥� he said.
Ware has tried to reintroduce unwritten histories through his art. Drawing on history of the camera as a method of making marginalized stories visible, Ware took photographs of individuals cast as forgotten historical figures. He broke the photographs with long vertical lines to invoke known images of tribal marks, barcodes and historical etchings while stripping away contemporary technology. Photographs in this style appear in 鈥淥ther Side of Wall Street,鈥� a graphic novel produced by Black Gotham Experience, which is being released in chapters.
We are 鈥渞ight in that time period where it makes sense to begin to go back to those documents and say things are missing. Let鈥檚 try to photoshop black folks back into history,鈥� he said.
Black Gotham Experience works to reintroduce a more complete history through walking tours on New York City streets.
Marisa Brown, assistant director of programs at the Center for the Public Humanities, noted the important ability of these tours to reach a new and diverse public by telling stories in a way 鈥渢hat not just students can participate in, but adults, children, people of all ages of at any stage of life,鈥� she said.
The tours provide Ware and participants the opportunity to disconnect from artifacts and their one-sided histories.
鈥淲e have to be mindful of how artifacts alone create the same kinds of realities that we鈥檙e trying to critique,鈥� he said, adding that new teaching and learning techniques must be utilized to reintroduce lost voices. To exemplify this dilemma, he raised a painting of Rhode Island ship captains who would become trustees of the University, pointing out the black servants at the edges of the image. While they were present, their stories were not the focus, and thus remain untold.
鈥淚f you only stick to what鈥檚 painted but don鈥檛 look at what鈥檚 not painted, you鈥檙e going to get two different pictures,鈥� Ware said. Artifacts are not adequate tools to understand an inclusive history. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like having the wrong software, like trying to design a building with Google sheets,鈥� he added. Understanding these stories requires using your imagination to connect the hidden dots, he said. 鈥淧art of our operating system as human beings involves our empathy, our imagination, our creativity,鈥� he said.
