Dannah Wilson

I started drawing in sixth grade focusing on the characters in “The Boondocks.” Today, I practice in many mediums such as drawing, painting, sewing and designing. In high school, I worked as a muralist with other high school students at the College for Creative Studies, which helped develop my foundational skills. In that time, I worked on five 360 degree murals and taught in after-school programs in my community, Brightmoor. College was the first time I took structured art classes, due to the lack of art resources in my middle and high schools. The artistic skills and knowledge that I brought to the University of Michigan were self-taught. Now as a fourth-year student and growing artist, I’ve continued to be thoughtful of my position as an artist and how I want to express my newfound experiences, love, joys and grief. Next year, my fifth year, I will be transitioning to study film as a result of listening to myself and wanting to explore new passions. Instead of choosing between two worlds of public policy/journalism and the arts, I choose to create art based on my understanding of systemic structures and pursue them with a creative approach. The work I submitted to The Miseducation Project is an emotional response to the class distinctions and grief experiences I noticed in my first and second years of college. This was made with Micron pens and watercolor paint. When I arrived at the University, I realized a couple things about the world around me pertaining to class and my people. For one, my understanding of the term “Black” completely expanded. I learned more about other ethnicities and immigrant families and how they connected to the existing racial binary in America. Before, “Black” only meant African American. This expansion was a blessing because I got the chance to broaden my understanding of Black experiences, activism and joy. The right-bottom key in my piece shows fully-painted blue faces that have three levels of opacity based on experience — wash blue, sky blue and bubblegum blue symbolize my Black peers in Ann Arbor and Detroit. The half-painted faces represent my Black peers born into or later grown into a status of privilege — or are attending college to attain this. The blank faces are stripped of the color blue and illustrated with the Micron pens. These faces are white like paper — the faces of the people we haven’t seen for years or decades or will never see for the remainder of our lives. They represent Black children who have passed away or are spending time in prison. Their color, or lack thereof, is figurative, symbolizing an angelic aspect. Looking closer at the portraits, there are many lines and dots on the faces that figuratively represent consistency, the “keep on keepin’ on” that we do. I want to make it clear that I don’t have all the answers to the questions that this piece comes with. The consistency is the process of me figuring it out. Respiration is breathing through these experiences, allowing them to exist without answers. The watercolor painted blue is a reference to a quote from the movie “Moonlight.” In the scene, where Juan and Chiron are sitting along the shore, listening to the waves of the ocean, Juan begins telling the story of his childhood nickname, “Blue.” Juan says: “I was a wild lil’ shorty, kinda like you. Running around with no shoes on when the moon was out. This one time, I was running by this old lady house. I was runnin,’ hollerin,’ cuttin,’ a fool boy. This old lady stopped me. She said, ‘Running around catching up all that light. In moonlight, black boys look blue.’” In this piece, the Black boys are kids and an embodiment of that moonlight. Being barefoot out in the dark gave me imagery and nostalgia of kids playing until the street lights were lit. That was a time when our innocence was equally exploited and expressed. But did this duality ever stop? The book “Black Lives 1900: W.E.B. Du Bois at the Paris Exposition” is another influence on this piece. When visiting the Black Art Library at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, organized and curated by Asmaa Walton, I discovered Du Bois’ work in documenting the lives of Black people. In the future, I plan to be more meticulous with these findings and defend these observations with research and analysis. Before this is an analytical piece, it is an emotional one. There are deep connections and the intertwined nature is multifaceted. I ask readers to see this work first as how I feel, then as what I think. There are a lot of underpinnings in this piece and it is open to other further interpretations than the ones I have expressed. The art that inspired this piece is in different fields. Although this is an illustration of a negative or uncomfortable experience, the linking art shows agency and persistence. As I was drawing Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” the song kept coming up. So I decided to title this piece “Faces of the Revolution” in honor of the impact faces, people and experiences have had on me and the potential for the next revolution. Thank you for being patient with me, as I put together the words for how much this work means to me.