#nonafaustine

Peaceful transitions to the brilliant, fearless photographer / visual artist @nonafaustine, whose groundbreaking work deeply resonated with so many of us. Speaking her name and sending my deepest condolences to her family and loved ones.

From @artnews: "In ways both provocative and beautiful, Faustine’s photography explored conditions afflicting Black women across time. She frequently photographed herself in ways that considered how her body acted as a record of histories of exploitation and empowerment."

2024 video and caption reposted from @brooklynmuseum: “We owe it to [our ancestors] to acknowledge what happened here—on this Earth, in this city.”

In this episode of Reclaimed, Nona Faustine joins us from the Lefferts Historic House, a historic homestead in Prospect Park, to discuss sites across New York City that are built upon legacies of enslavement, which Faustine has depicted in her photographic series, “White Shoes.”

Today, the Lefferts Historic House is jointly operated by Prospect Park Alliance and the Historic House Trust. The Alliance launched the ReImagine Lefferts initiative in 2021, which continues to allow artists, scholars, and community members to explore the lives, resistance, and resilience of the Indigenous people of Lenapehoking and the Africans enslaved by the Lefferts family between 1783 and 1827. This summer [2024] at the Lefferts Historic House, explore artist Adama Delphine Fawundu’ site-specific installation, which will include 25 textile pieces, paying homage to the everyday heroism of the 25 individuals enslaved by the Lefferts family, installed across the historic house’s Flatbush Avenue facade.

Our Reclaimed series focuses on art as a tool to reclaim lost narratives of history and lived experience. An effort to highlight and empower groups that have been left out, stigmatized, and misrepresented. Follow along for a celebration of our differences and strides toward collective healing and social progress.

Watch the full video and learn more

By Danny KingIn 

In photographer Nona Faustine's solo show "My Country," self-portraits taken on the streets of New York City sit next to partially obstructed shots of national monuments. In both cases, the result is a frank rendering of America's disgraceful and all-too-buried legacy of marginalization, but the two sets of photographs work on different scales. For the self-portraits, Faustine places herself, a black Brooklynite in her thirties, at the center of shameful sites in New York history: at, for instance, the intersection of Wall Street and Water Street, the location of a former slave market. Faustine's valiant presence — she often appears looking at the camera and wearing nothing more than a pair of white heels — distills the history to a personal, human plane. For the monument photos, she puts a severe black line over images of political landmarks ranging from the Statue of Liberty to the Lincoln Memorial; the graphic interruption stands for the scores of mistreated Americans for whom such structures and their supposed representation of the common good have remained inaccessible. Whether gesturing at injustice in this stark manner, or channeling it through her own body, Faustine makes long-term issues newly urgent. Detail from Liberty or Death, Sons of Africa, Washington Monument, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Baxter Street at the Camera Club of New York

Nona Faustine

"Real Raw and Ready" 

Video, 2:38