An Elegant Utility was an interdisciplinary installation piece exhibited at the Northwest African American Museum in 2017.
The piece explores the evolution of Black family and community building in Seattle’s Central District over the course of the latter half of the 20th Century. Told through interwoven personal, social and political narratives, An Elegant Utility uses the life of my grandfather, Franklin Joseph Green as a lens to explore how Black communities were created and nurtured in northern and western cities during The Great Migration. Told in the second decades of the 21st century, the exhibition is also a mediation on the loss of the richness of 20th century Black community life in wake of urban renewal, gentrification and displacement.
The exhibition was the product of 12 years of reflection, interrogation, research and documentation of my family’s personal and public life in Seattle’s Central District. The work employs archival family photographs and objects, story mapping, visualized genealogy, and oral histories in written and video formats.
