“Elevate: Body & Mind” is an exhibit centering Northeast Ohio artists of color. It invokes emotion in its viewers by looking into human psyche through portraiture in order to understand the inner workings of identity and its effects on artists of color. From the shining, reflective style of Brandon Dean to Nick Lee’s vivid brush strokes to Davon Branley’s beautiful multimedia art, the main gallery space at the Firelands Association for Visual Arts comes to life. 

From its opening Aug. 10, the exhibit has been seen by a variety of admirers, including Oberlin students like myself. From my first glance at the show — peering through the window — I could easily imagine how other people may come to view this exhibit. FAVA Executive Director Kathleen Jackson acknowledged this feeling viewers experience, highlighting the effect that this exhibit may have given its nuance.

“I think this show offers people the opportunity to look deeper than just the faces on a canvas,” Jackson said. “If you look at that face and you look a little bit deeper, you can see a sort of humanity.”

FAVA lays out their galleries in a way that optimizes opportunities for its artists.

“We wanted to do shows that were specifically featuring artists of color and take no commission on the sales from those shows,” Jackson said. “Some of their artwork sells, and they get 100 percent of it, which is not normal for any gallery. We also started a database of artists of color because there wasn’t one in the community.”

This exhibit will be short-lived, with Oct. 13 as its final day, as well as a closing reception Oct. 12. However, this has not limited its ability to bring in a range of people who could pick up on the themes of this exhibit, including exploring identity through cultural heritage, psychological landscapes, and personal mythologies. 

Having worked closely with each artist in this show, gallery director Tirzah Legg spoke on the exploration of identity that each artist does through their work on display. 

“Nick Lee’s work explores  representation of the Japanese-American identity, employing layers of symbology to connect the two cultures through portraits of family and friends as well as self portraits,” Legg wrote in an email to the Review. “Davon Branley’s self portraits present a glimpse inside of his mental landscape and its inhabitants; leading the audience through his mind as if they were watching a play, utilizing dramatic compositions, absurd realism and characters that act out certain emotions and themes in which he plays all of the roles. Brandon Dean’s work uses whiteness itself as an ‘exotic’ subject, condensing painting history and tropes of science fiction to expose the inherent strangeness of desire and the canonical drive.”

“Elevate” has been able to uplift a multitude of artists of color from the Northeast Ohio region, drawing from the directory of artists of color that FAVA took the initiative to make for the community surrounding Oberlin. In this series, there have been three exhibitions, with “Body & Mind” being the fourth.

“The works included in this exhibition touch on many themes incorporating symbology, surrealist imagery, psychological landscapes, but collectively talk about identity and use the body as its vehicle for expression,” Legg wrote.

Each artist represented in this exhibit felt empowered to create art meaningful to themselves, fostering a safe space for not only viewers, but the artists, too. 

“It’s a portraiture,” Jackson said. “It’s a really great mix of artists doing different portraiture work based on their own experiences and their interests.”

The common factor that each of these artists draw upon is the community to which they belong — artists of color in Northeast Ohio. However, viewers may not share the same common ground.

“One of the things that we try to do is create culture and community, giving people the opportunity to explore other peoples’ culture and community,” Jackson said. “So my hope is that they would take away from this show that all of this is part of our culture as a collective and all of this is part of our community.”