“This Existed Before Us, This Is Gonna Exist After Us” Solace and
the Third Black Biennial
Henry Ding
→B.ARCH 2026
Selim Kutlu
→BRDD PR 2029
At a panel discussion on February 17 in the Chace Auditorium, Black Biennial curators Karma Johnson (BFA SC 26), Khalil McKnight (BFA PT 27), and King Meulens (BArch 28) shared the discursive way in which they came up with the theme for the show. The three began by brainstorming guiding words. Johnson found power in comfort and motherhood. McKnight was interested in camouflage and its relationship with Black visibility and art. Meulens named distance, displacement, and migration as important Black experiences. Johnson remarked that the trio’s interests intersected in the “space of comfort,” where they eventually landed on the idea of solace. Meulens elaborated: “What I find powerful is that no matter what our people endure, we continue to keep going. We continue to find solace, to find joy, and to find momentum.”
The exhibition, titled Please Catch Me When I Fall, built a space of reflection, as the introductory text noted, “between harm and home, between the need to belong and the refusal to be contained.” The work itself represented a range of mediums and people: current RISD students, RISD alumni, and artists from the community. In the gallery’s side room was a mock living room, complete with sofas and decor brought from the curators’ own homes and invoking their experience of the Black home.
A view of the mock living room side gallery
Moving across the show was particularly sensorial, with special attention given to the viewing experience. If you stumbled on Meulens’s own work, The Soul of King Anthony: Transcendental Reliquaries and its accompanying mixtape, you could hear the investment in energy and rhythm. The curators pointed out three works they thought of as anchor pieces for the exhibition: Melat Miranda-Ramirez’s (BFA PT 27) painting Laure’s Rest, Dorian Epps’s (BFA ID 21) textiles work LOVEFEAST, and Lloyd-Princeton Cangé’s (MFA PT 26) charcoal collage Second Moment of Courage. Miranda-Ramirez’s painting depicts a resting Black woman, rendered with red skin, parodying Édouard Manet’s Olympia. The piece’s saturated color palette and assorted fabrics subvert the male and Eurocentric perspective embodied by Manet. The inclusion of a cutout of the Black maid from Manet’s original piece serves as another challenge to colonial and hierarchical histories in the art that we inherit. Epps’s work was hung outside the entrance of the main gallery, a disarmingly joyful and intimate welcome to Gelman’s stark and sanitary lobby. During the show’s packed reception, the lobby crowd seemed to embody the spirit of the Black gathering that the work depicts. Despite Cangé’s collage resting on the back wall of the gallery, it was highly prominent from entry, given its life-size height. The piece’s central image is a Black man in a standoff against three dogs. Its size and violent nature makes it easy to miss the work’s smaller ink drawings and portraits on a first pass. But on a second viewing, perhaps as the piece intends, we are led to wonder in what sizes and momentums that “courage” takes form.
Melat Miranda-Ramirez, Laure’s Rest, oil and acrylic
Dorian Epps, detail of LOVEFEAST, leather, canvas, and up-cycled clothing
In the panel discussion, the curators also emphasized the role of the community that built the show alongside them, a network of Black artists, designers, academics, and community members from RISD, Brown, Providence, and around the world. The trio highlighted that their design team, who crafted the promotional material and exhibit branding, were five Black female designers: Constance Benford (BFA GD 26), Mary-Elizabeth Boatey (BFA GD 27), Desirae Nyatenya (BFA ID 26), Gabi Harkless (BFA GD 26), and Nina Jeffries-El (BFA GD 27). At the exhibition opening, all three curators wore clothing and jewelry designed by Brooklyn-based RISD alum Desiree Scarborough (BFA APP 20). The opening was catered by Caribbean Soul—a Providence-based catering business—with DJ sets by Bimbo Jackie and Gigg Economy, two Providence-based artists. The trio further collaborated with Brown’s WBRU internet radio station, several local photographers and interviewers, and Public Shop and Work—an African and Latina-owned creative business in Olneyville. The curators’ collaborations made it clear that it was important to not just celebrate Black art, but to have it curated, organized, and enjoyed by the Black community.
An installation view of the gallery with
Lloyd-Princeton Cangé’s Second Moment of Courage
This is the third iteration of the Black Biennial. During the inaugural 2022 edition, curated by Melaine Ferdinand-King (Brown PhD Africana Studies 24) and Rey Londres (BFA PH 22), Njari Anderson (BRDD SC + Modern Culture and Media 24), writing for v.1, similarly highlighted the collective and devoted work it took to make the show happen: “At this Black center, there was the somber reminder of the immense labor it took to bring The Black Biennial to life. Years of labor, visible and invisible hands alike advocating for Black “need,” the needs who’ve come before We and for who’ll come after.”
Two years later, Angelina Rodgers (BFA PT 2025), also writing for v.1, again noted the profound effort of the biennial curators. They asked, “Who, at RISD, will be committed to understanding the Black Biennial’s growing history and work to continue it?”; “Might there be more dedicated institutional resources set in place to make recurring student-run shows go up without such a strain?”; and “How can future recurring student shows at RISD procure consistent funding for documentation, publications, and opening ceremonies; especially shows dedicated to BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ representation?” When we shared Rodgers’s questions with the current curators, they observed that much of the biennial’s organization had been ground up. Apart from intergenerational guidance from Mark Moscone and the curators of 2024’s iteration of the biennial—Amadi Williams (BFA PT 25) and Isaiah “Prophet” Raines (BFA SC 25)—the process of making the biennial happen was an unfolding work in progress. There was little documentation of the systems that make the Black Biennial happen, apart from a recurring call for proposals.
One consistent unknown over the biennial’s years has been funding, given that it has varied from one biennial to the next. In 2022, to start, the Black Biennial benefited from a post-COVID political context and departmental budget surpluses, and with support from Academic Affairs, the curators produced a 200-page exhibition catalog. In 2024, with the COVID-era surpluses no longer available, uncertainties arose. With this year’s iteration, the biennial team was able to procure a wide range of support in addition to that provided by Campus Exhibitions for student-curated Gelman Gallery exhibitions, including from the Division of Social Equity and Inclusion (SEI), Career Services, and the Black Alumni Affinity Group, which suggests an upward trajectory for the biennial’s place and future in RISD. SEI and Alumni + Family Relations, in particular, have been a large source of support for this year’s iteration of the biennial, and seemingly those in the future. In an email exchange, Vice President for SEI Rame Hanna noted that “SEI is committed to supporting future iterations of the Black Biennial in partnership with Campus Exhibitions,” and that “[the Black Biennial] is an important part of SEI’s broader mission to advance equity, inclusion, and belonging through art and design.” Vice President Hanna added that he would be deeply committed “to ensuring that initiatives like the Black Biennial continue to uplift community voices and foster meaningful dialogue across RISD and the Providence community.”
With Please Catch Me When I Fall, the Black Biennial seems to arrive at a sense of home in RISD’s exhibition landscape. The curators are deeply committed to the longevity of the biennial. They have started to make a physical and digital archive of their curatorial process to support future curators who step up to the call, helping to ensure
that the Black Biennial persists at RISD. They have also forged ties with faculty, namely Dr. Jameka Hartley (this iteration’s faculty advisor), relationships that are key to keeping the biennial healthy and growing. The curators emphasized the generosity of the
community involved with the biennial: “So many people just
wanted to be here, support, and show up.”
A view of the main gallery
Two years after Rodgers posed the question of who will be committed to understanding and continuing the biennial’s history, Johnson, McKnight, and Meulens answer: curators, artists, and community who care about relationship and longevity. In the panel discussion, the curators were asked for a word, beyond solace, that would best describe their exhibition. Johnson answered:
“The word would be lineage. This existed before us, this is gonna exist after us. Hopefully for as long as RISD continues on. All the work we did is archived. All the emails. All the templates. Everything is archived so that [future curators] can use it moving forward. We’re working hard, even though we know that it’s things that we might not ever see or things that we might not ever touch again, to continue on this lineage, to continue on this cycle, because everyone has something new to bring to the table.”
And so the curators have found a second kind of solace: the comfort of knowing the biennial will endure beyond them.
Henry Ding is taking a nap.
Selim Kutlu wants to sleep.