This year’s UPRISING art exhibition an homage to Black ancestry
As students began planning the seventh annual UPRISING art exhibition at St. Olaf College, they realized it was the first year that none of them personally knew the Oles who had originally launched the series celebrating Black history and culture through the visual and performing arts.
They felt it was important to use this moment to express their gratitude for those who had paved the path for their work — both the original team behind the creation of UPRISING and other Black trailblazers.
“Wherever you are from, the people who came before us fought for us to have simple privileges, for us to be treated more humanely than they were,” says UPRISING co-curator Queenie Wynter ’25. “It was only two generations ago that my great-uncle was receiving a university acceptance letter asking for him to send them a photograph to prove he wasn’t ‘a negro.’ It’s hard to remember sometimes that the fact that we can go to college, express ourselves, and be heard is a huge deal! Because we have a space where Black expression is promoted, we just wanted to show gratitude toward those who made that easier for us to do so.”
This year’s exhibit, Never Forget the Source: An Homage to Black Ancestry, is on display through February 29 in the Groot Gallery in the Center for Art and Dance. It features photographs, drawings, poetry, original songs, a story inspired by the Shounen genre with Black warriors, an installation imitating a police investigation, and more.
“Paying homage to my ancestors is something that hits close since my East African identity has been a prevalent theme in my poetry since 2020,” says UPRISING co-curator Ruhama Solomon ’24. Paying tribute to past UPRISING exhibitions also allows everything to come full circle for the St. Olaf senior, who showcased her first poems in the show as a first-year student and is now finishing her time on the Hill by curating the exhibit for the second year in a row.
Solomon notes that the UPRISING art exhibition series, which was founded by Shaquille Brown ’19, Mercy Garriga ’18, and Rudorwamwari “Rudo” Nyakanda ’19 in response to protests against racism on the St. Olaf campus in 2017, offers a powerful space on campus for marginalized Black voices and fosters community interactions among students, faculty, and staff.
“As Black artists, we want those who do not identify with us to know this: we are not doing this solely for your consumption. We are doing this to celebrate ourselves,” Solomon says. “An artist can be defined in multiple ways and is not tied down to just a paint brush or a pencil. It is a form of expression.”