Q&A: Amira Brown

A hand places a sticker onto a pink shirt. Four exclamation points underscore the sticker’s simple message, which reads “VOTE” in all caps. Rectangles hovering over the hand insert a range of different skin colors — purple, pink, brown, black, and blue. These snippets illustrate fundamental facets of the voting process in a democracy: the diversity of independent voices as well as the complex personal heritages of these individuals.

This poster, designed by artist Amira Brown, was created to encourage voter turnout during the 2019 local elections. Brown’s colorful designs were shared online and around New Haven as part of a project sponsored by Create The Vote New Haven, a nonpartisan project of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. Collaging imagery digitally and with physical papers, Brown’s posters drew inspiration from her love of graphic novels. The two posters by Brown present a fresh take on agitprop media with their emphasis on different people, ages, and experiences.

The intersection of the arts and political action has become a recurring theme in Brown’s work as an artist and activist since the 2016 presidential election. That year, she contributed a work titled Looking Homeward for the exhibition Sanctuary Cities and the Politics of the American Dream at Creative Arts Workshop. Included in the Ely Center of Contemporary Art’s virtual art show What Now?, Brown’s mixed media piece, Rose Soul Cocktail (2020), is critical of the disproportionate ways that the novel coronavirus has impacted the poor and affluent people.

Earlier this summer, Brown was the creative force behind the Bailout Gallery, gathering works from over 40 artists. Together, they raised money from the sales of artwork, with 100% of the proceeds going to the Pimento Relief Fund, Black Visions, Liberty Fund, and Connecticut Bail Fund. The success of this project has become a springboard for upcoming, politically-fueled work for Brown.

Brown and I spoke over email about how her process has been impacted by the gravity of recent events: the enforced shutdown of the pandemic; the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade; and the blurry shape of the future. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

[Jacquelyn Gleisner] In March, the New Haven area began to shut down, and then, after the murder of George Floyd at the end of May, the pandemic became intertwined with racial unrest. How has your practice responded to these events and evolved over the past few months?

[Amira Brown] I would have to say my practice eventually unraveled the more time I spent with it. I realized that my instability with my practice was because I jumped too quickly into attempting to produce and keep up with contemporaries rather than analyzing and seeing what I genuinely want out of my art practice. I internalized capitalist ideals of success to spite those who thought I wouldn’t make anything of myself and ended up with a quickly collapsing Jenga tower of art. Right now, I’m focusing on what gives me fulfillment visually and conceptually. I plan to redirect my goals and efforts of these things going forward.

[JG] How are you making time for fulfillment and self-care during this stressful period?

[AB] I’m attempting to make time to meditate and facilitate more time to myself, but juggling two jobs with life and all these current events going on will never be easy.

[JG] When you submitted a reading list for this blog in April, you mentioned that you had been investigating non-linear ideas of time, especially Rasheedah Phillips's text, Black Quantum Futurism: Theory and Practice. How have you been noticing or applying the theories of Black Quantum Futurism within your daily routines?

[AB] I’ve been noticing the way that current artists apply the conceptual framework into their creative practice like Moor Mother Goddess who not only activates the space through performance but also arranges these performances in spaces buried and overlooked by history in America. I want to emulate this strategy within my own practice when or if it fits. The way I experience time is already similar in line with the way with Afrofuturist descriptions of time.

[JG] Can you elaborate on these alternate conceptions of time and how these ideas are manifested in your work as an artist?

[AB] Instead of arranging and recalling things in linear time frames like 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. and the future being inaccessible and basically controlled by whim, Afro-diasporic notions of time are much more flexible in which past, present, and future all flow cyclically together and are recalled by an event, not linear time. I’ve been experimenting with the notion of time through attempting to incorporate art forms like sequential art and animation which deals explicitly with time in how it is used and implied literally and metaphorically through imagery. I hope to make work that can allow multiple notions of time to be indicated in the works.

[JG} Earlier this summer, you created the Bailout Gallery, gathering the work of over 40 artists with 100% of the proceeds of their works going to the CT Bailout fund. Can you talk about your motivation for this project?

[AB] I was motivated and depressed by the fact that all we artists and art workers could do at the time was make art and attempt to use capitalist based objectives to facilitate radical change. It just wasn’t working and eventually the idea sort of manifested itself. I wanted to support real change in a way that was unaligned with capitalist presentations and definitions of art. Art has always been more than the object that is meant to be culturally cooed over as it gathers dust in the collector's home or languishes in museum storage. Art has always been a part of life, revolution, and change and has more teeth than we know.

Amira Brown, Sun Moon and Stars (Dime), 2020. Image courtesy of the artist. — Amira Brown, *Sun Moon and Stars (Dime)*, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.

[JG] Tell me about the work you included in this fundraiser.

[AB] The piece I included titled Sun Moon and Stars (Dime) was a hope I had for the future at large, that eventually black babies and children have just as much reach for potential, resources, and futures as their counterparts. My hope is that they are still allowed to be children and have room for childhood instead of being labeled as troublemakers, loud, or unruly. The behaviors of black children seem to be scrutinized and policed more so than other children. Also, my private hope is that I can eventually have children that won’t be damaged by the rampant anti-blackness in our system and in our society at large.

[JG] Bailout Gallery was not your first project with political motivations. In 2019, you made posters to raise awareness about the mayoral election. Why was this issue important to you?

[AB] The issue was important to me because I wanted to encourage the local community to participate in local elections. The project didn’t reach the level of effectiveness that I had hoped for. I think people just didn’t resonate with the project as much as I thought, which could be due to a variety of factors within my execution; however, Bailout Gallery did show me that internal change has the potential to genuinely drive community change. The poster project was a great first step to realizing projects with the community in mind.

[JG] As a longtime New Haven resident, have you witnessed any important recent changes as a result of heightened awareness of racial inequities?

[AB]. As a genuine member of the community, I would say that real resources need to be poured into specific parts of New Haven such as the Dixwell and Whalley neighborhoods. Over the years, I’ve seen downtown New Haven get bigger, and I’ve seen Yale students who are afraid of my city. I doubt things will change until we take genuine collective community action to correct these inequities with the community leading the forefront.

[JG] What changes would you like to see within the art community?

[AB] I would like to see art communities and art events involving and taking in community feedback from the people who were born and reside here. It’s very disheartening when most of the creative resources stay with the few who have them. It’s also disappointing to see people seeking to implement changes without community feedback or involvement.

[JG] Community feedback is integral to the viability of local arts organizations. If any arts administrators are reading this interview, how do you propose they can foster more meaningful exchanges with the community?

[AB]: I believe ConnCAT was providing a great example by creating community forums in which people gathered to discuss the Dixwell community project. Art institutions, rather than the town, should facilitate these meetings to discuss art programming. It can be done virtually or in person. What’s most important is listening with the intent to hear what people are saying in good faith.