Mellon 2023-2024 Artists in Residence

This project was made possible through support by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Cover Images: African Busts in Jardim Botanico, Libon, Portugal (images 1 and 3) and Mema, Villa Mella, Santo Domingo, DR, 2022 (image 2).

Lincoln University

President Brenda A. Allen submitted a successful proposal to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which resulted in a $600,000 grant to invest in Lincoln University’s Pan-Africana/Black Studies curriculum, faculty, and programming.

Dr. Allen reflects on the significance of this generous gift: “Lincoln University is proud to be the recipient of this grant geared towards further revitalizing Black Studies. This grant allows us to evaluate the current curriculum, implement dynamic new classes, and attract additional faculty to the program,” said Allen. She continued, “Additionally, through the Scholars and Artists in Residence program, we are excited to bring innovative Black thinkers to campus who will work closely with students and faculty in interactive and meaningful ways.”

Foremothers and Daughters”

The Legacy and Impact of Zora Neale Hurston on Black Studies

Image courtesy of Library of Congress.

Foremothers and Daughters is a year-long series that traces Zora Neale Hurston’s lasting influence on the field of Black Studies. As an anthropologist, folklorist, ethnographer, writer, and filmmaker, Hurston traveled extensively throughout the American South and the Caribbean to document and thereby preserve Black cultural traditions. Her work serves as an exemplary model of research, scholarship, and artistry. In order to honor her legacy, this year-long project celebrates Hurston. In the fall of 2023, this project brings Sasha Phyars-Burgess to campus and situates her, due to her travel and documentation of the African Diaspora, as a ‘daughter’ to Hurston.

Image courtesy of Library of Congress.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Intellectual and Artistic Daughter:

Sasha Phyars-Burgess

b. 1988. Scorpio. Black. Alive.

Sasha Phyars-Burgess was born to Trinidadian parents in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She received a BA in photography from Bard College and an MFA from Cornell University. Her photographs employ a documentary approach to the domestic, the unsupervised, and the ordinary in an effort to explore the varied social, economic, and political realities of the African diaspora. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship Awardee.

Sasha Phyars-Burgess.

Lincoln University pays tribute to Zora Neale Hurston by premiering Sasha Phyars-Burgess’ exhibit:

Everything Nice

In order to pay tribute to Zora Neale Hurston, in the fall 2023 semester, Lincoln University will premier documentary photographer Sasha Phyars-Burgess’ exhibit “Everything Nice” in the Langston Hughes Memorial Library at Lincoln University. In terms of artistic tradition, Phyars-Burgess’ project exemplifies Hurston’s legacy. Like Hurston, Phyars-Burgess documents the Black tradition by traveling to communities throughout the American South and the Caribbean. Both artists reveal the mobility and agency possible to Black people through artistic practices.

Peas in a Community Garden in Harlem, Clewistown, a town in the Lake Okeechobee region of Florida, 2022. The Lake Okeechobee region is the largest sugar producer in the United States.

Harlem resident gets food outside of Harlem Academy, Harlem, Clewiston, FL, 2022

Images courtesy of Sasha Phyars-Burgess.

A photography exhibit documenting the global impact of the sugar cane industry on the black diaspora.

Langston Hughes Memorial Library, Floors 1-4, Sept. 25, 2023-April 30, 2024.

THE MEANING OF THE TITLE

Everything Nice

The title of the exhibit offers a dual allusion. First, the title alludes to the refrain of the poplar nineteenth century children’s nursery rhyme (What are little girls made of/Sugar and spice and everything nice”). In contrast to the innocence captured by the nursery rhyme, this exhibit emphasizes the violence inherent in the far-reaching sugar cane industry. In order to meet the commercial demand for sugar, the industry enslaved Africans to work the fields and sugar factory production in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Florida, and Louisiana. Second, the title alludes to the song by the same title popularized by Jamaican Dance Hall artist Popcaan that emphasizes the need, even in within traumatic circumstances, to reclaim autonomy in the present moment.

Sugarcane as a Global Crop

Everything Nice interrogates and documents the legacies of sugar, commonly referred to as ‘White Gold’. Historically, sugarcane agriculture on plantations was a brutal and laborious process that required 24-hour work during harvest season. Cane was to be cut, sent to the mill, and processed immediately, requiring slave gangs of various ages and skill levels to work vigilantly in a highly dangerous environment. While many of these practices have changed over time, today the production of sugar retains echoes and hauntings of this legacy. Phyars-Burgess photographs contemporary communities that sprang from the sugar trade and also those who live and work around sugarcane fields in the present. In this on-going project, to date Phyars- Burgess has visited sites in sugar-industry related communities in Portugal, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Louisiana, and Florida. This exhibition showcases 22 large-scale and 10 smaller-scale images from the larger project.

Sugar Cane Field, St. Martinsville, Louisiana Image courtesy of Sasha Phyars-Burgess.

Phyars-Burgess’ Artistic Practice

Phyars-Burgess’ practice is situated in documenting, observing, and creating with and within the African diaspora. She weaves a common thread through the African diaspora to visualize the vastness of the geosocio-political undertaking of the transatlantic slave trade’s cultivation, harvesting, production, and distribution of sugar. She uses photography to follow ancestral leads, tie up loose ends, and confront the dead ends of history by making photographs that insist on our existence.

Mimi in New Orleans City Park, 2022.

Image courtesy of Sasha Phyars-Burgess.

SASHA PHYARS-BURGESS . YOLANDA WISHER . SUMI TONOOKA

LABORATION COLLABORATION COLLABORATION COLLABORATION

Traces A Multi-Media Performance

COLLABORATION

COLLABORATION COLLABORATION COLLABORATION COLLABORATION

Poet Yolanda Wisher and jazz pianist and composer Sumi Tonooka were invited to collaborate with documentary photographer Phyars-Burgess. Wisher and Tonooka will draw on Sasha Phyars-Burgess’ photos to create an original script (Wisher) and music composition (Tonooka). Through class visits and a master class, Wisher and Tonooka will work with students to co-create a song-poem that pays tribute to the echoes, hauntings, and traces of the Black past.

Yolanda Wisher

Yolanda Wisher. Poet, singer, educator, and curator Yolanda Wisher is author of Monk Eats an Afro and co-editor of the anthology Peace is a Haiku Song. Wisher earned an M.A. in English/Poetry from Temple University and B.A. in English/Black Studies from Lafayette College, where she received an honorary doctorate in 2021. Wisher was named inaugural Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania in 1999 and third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2016. Her poetry has been featured in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, Wisher received the Leeway Foundation and Transformation Award in 2019 for her commitment to art for social change. In 2022, she was named a Philadelphia Cultural Treasures Artist Fellow. Wisher performs a blend of poetry and song with her band Yolanda Wisher and The Afroeaters. Their debut album Doublehanded Suite was released in 2022.

yolanda wisher

SumiTonooka

SUMI TONOOKA

Sumi Tonooka has been called a “fierce, fascinating composer pianist” (Jazz Times), “provocative and compelling” (New York Times), and “continually inventive, original, surprising, a total delight,” (Cuadranos de Jazz, Madrid). With fifteen recordings to her name and a vast catalogue of compositions and award-winning works in genres symphonic, chamber, dance, and film, Tonooka continues to be a creative force.

Most recently, Tonooka was awarded a PEW fellowship grant for distinguished artists in September 2023. Tonooka was also a finalist in the 2021 Emerging Black Composers Project to compose her fourth symphonic work for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in December 2022. She is also a 2021 recipient of the Doris Duke, Creative Inflections Grant as a co-creator with vocalist/composer, Jen Shyu for In The Green Room, a multi- disciplinary music production inspired by the stories of women in Jazz. Other recent awards include, Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works grant, (2019) and composer in residence with the South Dakota Symphony through the New Music Alive Residency, New Music USA. Her first symphonic work “Full Circle” was performed by the American Composers Orchestra in NYC in 2013, through the Jazz Composers Orchestra Intensive, a program that was created through Columbia University, UCLA, Herb Albert School of Music and Doris Duke to support and foster new works for Orchestra by Jazz composers.

Fall 2023

Everything Nice Exhibit Debuts at Lincoln University in the Langston Hughes Memorial Library

-The Everything Nice Exhibit will be shown on floors 1-4, from September 25, 2023-April 30 , 2024. It is free and open to the public

Artists in Residence visit classes, hold master classes, and collaborate with LU students

-Sasha Phyars-Burgess. September 18-25 and October 23—27, 2023

-Yolanda Wisher. September 22-27 and September 28-October 6th , 2023

-Sumi Tonooka. October 16- 20th and October 21-27, 2023

Spring 2024

Traces, A Multi-Media Performance, premiers on the Lincoln University campus with talk-back with the artists

Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming Space, Zora Neale Hurston

Documentary Film

Zora Neale Hurston’s Legacy Panel

The calendar is continuously updated and any new events will be advertised widely. For further information regarding class visits, and master classes, please check the campus-wide Daily Bulletin or reach out directly to Dr. Deas at mdeas@lincoln.edu.

Discussion Questions

Reflection

1. Who in your family inspires you the most, what qualities do they hold and what ‘famous’ family lore exemplifies their legacy?

2. Forced migration through enslavement or voluntary migration in search of new opportunities, are often an important part of Black family’s stories. What do you know about your family’s movements? What motivated them to stay or relocate?

3. How might you connect your family’s story to the larger stories of the Black diaspora? What themes emerge in your story that are clues to a larger communal Black story?

4. What role does sugar play in your family and current community?

Research/Create

1. How does Zora Neale Hurston draw on folk tradition in her short stories? Why is this important?

2. Within the context of exploitation and oppression as experienced by Black people, there is often a counter-story—clues of spirited resistance and steely determination. Who, historically or in the present, serves as a model to you for these values?

3. How has the sugar industry impacted the lived Black experience? Name two ways.

Action

1. How might you find out more about your family and your roots?

2. What is a research question that has emerged for you after viewing this exhibit that you could further investigate?

Learn More

To more fully understand the significance of the sugar cane industry’s impact on the African diaspora, Zora Neale Hurston, or the role of Black documentary photography, please explore the resources below.

Additionally, if you are a faculty member, please encourage your students to participate in this year-long programming. Faculty might assign one of the provided articles, utilize the provided discussion questions, encourage students to visit the library exhibit (floors 1-4), attend a class with the Artists/ Scholars-in-Residence, or attend the multi-media performance. We encourage all faculty to offer assignments for credit and opportunities for in-class engagement and discussion.

For additional educational resources related to this exhibit, please visit the Library Guide.

To learn more about the importance of photography to document the Black experience, please watch Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People.

To read more about the significance of Zora Neale Hurston’s life and work, please read “What Zora Went Looking For.”

To understand the lasting impact of the sugar industry on the African Diaspora, read “The Sugar that Saturates the American diet has a Barbaric History as the ‘White Gold’ that Fueled Slavery” from the 1619 project.

Notes

Acknowledgements

Primary Investigator

Primary Investigator

dr. mahpiua deas, associate professor of english, department of languages & literature

president brenda a. allen

Special Thanks To:

-Ms. Tiffany Davis, Director, Langston Hughes Memorial Library

-Ms. Karen Vaught, Senior Administrative Assistant, Langston Hughes Memorial Library

-Ms. Reachell Chambers, Library Services Specialist/Office Assistant, Langston Hughes Memorial Library

-Ms. Marion Bernard-Amos, Director/Assistant Provost, Office of Faculty Affairs

-Ms. Marsha Spencer, Title III Project Specialist

-Ms. Yoli Echevarria, Program Coordinator and Executive Assistant, Academic Affairs

-Ms. Diana Akumu, Senior Administrative Assistant, Academic Affairs

-Mr. Enrique Ayala, Assistant Maintenance Manager, Physical Plant

-Emilio Torres and Donald Tillie, Physical Plant

Designed by Jakiyah “Khy” Anderson

B.S. in Visual Arts, Lincoln University, 2017