There is no sterile white gallery wall separating the art from everyday life. Instead, imagine walking through bedrooms in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, encountering work by Black women artists in rooms devoted to themes such as protection, nurturing, memory and water.
A House Is Not a Home brings together 25 Black women artists to examine America’s 250-year history through the women whose labor, care and creativity helped build it, even when that work went unnamed or unrecognized. Curated by Jade Flint and artist Taylor Thomas, and presented by Long Gallery Harlem, the exhibition takes a different approach to remembering the country’s past.
“As we were approaching the 250th anniversary of America, we knew that there were going to be these very idealized, romanticized ideas about how this country was founded,” Flint said as she walked through the exhibition.
Flint and Thomas wanted to offer a different way of remembering America: by centering Black women not simply as witnesses to the country’s history, but as people who made the country what it is. The exhibition looks beyond the physical work of maintaining a home to what Flint calls the “emotional scaffold” required to keep families and communities together.
The experience unfolds inside an actual house, specifically Thomas’s parents’ home on Martha’s Vineyard. One room is dedicated to the many identities Black women carry at once: mother, wife, professional and caretaker, along with the challenge of maintaining a sense of self through all those transitions. Another room examines protection. One work references “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” which once helped Black travelers identify places where they could safely eat and move through the country. Katharen Wiese’s piece, “Safe Places,” uses handmade cotton paper arranged in a collage. Then there’s a room devoted to the relationship between Black people and water.
“Since we’re on Martha’s Vineyard, we wanted to talk about Black people’s relationship to water,” Flint explained. “Given the fact that we came here through the transatlantic slave trade, we could have continued to have a very traumatic relationship with water, and many of us still do. But being on this island, we wanted to highlight that Martha’s Vineyard hasn’t been a haven for Black people in the last few decades. Black people have been here since the 19th century, starting with the Black whalers and their wives, who made this place a home that we know it to be now.”
Many who have seen A House Is Not a Home have felt an immediate sense of recognition. “We’ve gotten tears, we’ve gotten joy,” Flint said. People have shared stories about their own mothers and their own experiences as wives and mothers.
The exhibition is in its final week at Martha’s Vineyard, and all the works are available for sale.
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