Art Workshop with German Artist: Paula Doepfner

Culture Keepers exhibit at the Goethe Institute in collaboration with Paula Doepfner's solo show: Take it Right Back

Paula Doepfner workshop with students and Culture Keepers after school program

For you I have been absent in the spring (c) Paula Doepfner, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Tanja

The Goethe Institute facilitated a workshop  Culture Keepers!  Every year we engage youth in current social and political issues through the arts. The program has an international focus and a specific emphasis on the the global African diaspora and has received funding from the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to conduct international youth exchanges.

Workshop participants worked with materials such as water, paper, plants, pigments, etc. to address questions related to materials, processes, aesthetics – as well as the social construction notions of the environment, nature, the city, and beauty. Questions posed in workshop: What are natural materials? What are "urban" materials, is there a difference? Who has access to which materials? How are access and representation of materials historically, socially and politically relevant? Who has ownership of "nature," "the environment," "space"? Why? How is the nature of used and perceived global cultural differences? Who uses nature and what are the effects of these terms (e.g. climate change)? What is violence - on a personal (i.e. pain, sadness, anger), on a local level (i.e. physical violence), on a global level (i.e. environmental violence)? What is resilience? Can we express universal narratives of violence, resilience, or beauty through objects?

CULTURE KEEPERS ART EXHIBITION

Culture Keepers Quilt

 

About PGAAMCC Culture Keepers:   The Prince George’s African American Museum & Cultural Center is proud to present Culture Keepers, an arts and cultural after-school program at Northwestern and Suitland High Schools.  The focus of the Culture Keepers program is to expose high school  students to Prince George’s County African American history, culture, and art.  Major projects produced by Culture Keepers are innovative community arts and history research projects, that includes public murals and cross- cultural collaborations. 

Currently, Culture Keepers is held at CVPA, Suitland High School in District Heights and Northwestern High School, VPA in Hyattsville, Maryland. 

About Art Project: At War with Ourselves: The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy: PGAAMCC’s Culture Keepers at CVPA, Suitland High School and Northwestern High School, VPA, collaborated with the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center to create  art work in conjunction with the Center’s At War with Ourselves: The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy poetry project. Culture Keepers worked with PGAAMCC educators and artists to research the historical content of the poem and later create art based on their research. 

The video art and quilt interprets the poem  The Battle of and for the Black Face by Nikky Finney. The poem expresses the African American male experience in the U.S.

The poem also explores the African American presence in the Civil War and offers a focused and uncensored gaze at what tore our nation apart; racially and culturally, past and present.  

Project Title: At War with Ourselves: The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy Public Art Project

Art Projects:

1. Video Art Installation

2. Mixed Media Quilt

Culture Keepers, Suitland High School:

Students-
Kennedy Kirksey
Bryanna Rather
Mary Lane
Kenetia Pinkett

Karima Winter
Naima Shaw
Janelle Hobbs

Yasmin Eubanks 

Culture Keepers, Northwestern High School:

Students-

Angeline Kline

Georges Ngayap Hatcheu

Summer Judd

Destiny Porter-Stephans

Mabel Perez

Program Teacher Liaisons:

Maria Salanda

Roxanne France-Woods

Jamea Richmond-Edwards

Teaching Artists

Shaymar Higgs

Paul Grant

Chanel Compton

Scholar-In-Residence:

Arvenita Washington-Cherry, Ph.D