Michigan State University 2024 Slavery to Freedom Art Exhibit
Last fall, I was approached by the Associate Dean of Diversity & Campus Inclusion for Michigan State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. Marita Gilbert, to create a piece of art for the their annual event— The William G. Anderson Slavery to Freedom Lecture Series : An American Odyssey. I had only recently heard about the lectures earlier in the year after Angela Davis came to town as one of their guests/speakers. I missed her lecture, but I told myself the following year I would attend at least one session if not all of them.
The speaker series is something that has taken place every February, for 23 years, that invites the community and university to hear activists and Civil Rights leaders give talks, as well as celebrate Black Culture. As you can imagine, I felt and still feel very honored to have been invited to be this years’ chosen artist. During our initial conversation Dr. Gilbert spoke about me doing one single piece as they’d done the year before, and I decided to pitch a different idea to them for two reasons. One I had recently found out I was pregnant and needed a project to focus on rather than pumping out commission after commission. Secondly, I wanted my involvement with the series to be innovative and hard to match. Of course, typical Mila shit. After seeing her reaction to the previous year’s Inktober project with all the vinyl records, I came back to them with the idea of creating a 24-piece Collection that would celebrate and touch on major events within our culture.
Dr. Angela Davis — a current professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, author and social justice activist — speaks at one of three events for the 23rd annual Dr. William G. Anderson "Slavery to Freedom" Lecture Series at Pasant Theater in the Wharton Center on Feb. 9, 2023. (Photo by Sonya Barlow | The State News)
I thought it would be really cool to do the collection on various “musical” related canvases. So that meant vinyls, cassette tapes, and music sheets. My idea was that so much of our history had been spread, told, and advocated for through music that you can’t really see Black Culture without music, nor music without Black Culture. It’s just part of our style. If you think about indigenous traditions and celebrations they’re met with songs and dancing. When we were enslaved messages were passed by way of field calls and hymns. Then as music became commercialized artists like Nina Simone, Bob Marley, and others called attention to the injustice our people were and continue to face.
So I birthed the “Storytelling Through Music” Collection which consists of 12 watercolor paintings, 6 oil paintings on vinyl records, and 6 oil paintings on a set of cassette tapes. They showcase things like girls doing each-other’s hair, fists being raised, a choir singing, and more. I chose to make the cassette tapes range in their level of abstract to illustrate hair types, and pay homage to the nose being one phenotype that was purposefully removed in order to hide our Egyptian roots. Hence a couple of the cassette tapes only have a silhouette with hair and a nose. Other pieces felt a bit risky to include like my oil painting of the Montgomery Brawl, or the “Changes” piece that features a list of ‘Things White Men Gave Our Community For Free.’ However, I’ve always told myself I need to continue to create art that causes discussions, so this project wasn’t going to be any different.
The collection is set to display every Thursday in February at the various speaker sessions around MSU’s Campus, and although none of the original pieces are for sale I decided to run a set of 5 prints for each piece. That way the art can continue to exist outside of MSU’s walls as well. Prints will release February, 1st.
To see the entire collection or register for this years’ lectures, click the links below.
