Join us for the gallery opening of "Our Blues: Ancestral Joy, Historical Trauma" by Regina Y. Evans at Recirculation, a project of Word Up.
“Our Blues” is a fabric sculpture installation highlighting the sacred life stories of black women as they travel across oppression and subjugation, and into manifested liberty and freedom. Through extensive scholarly research and excavation that is revealed through creativity, the installation looks at the duality of a journey from rage to joy (with the understanding that rage held with intention can be the fuel needed for upending injustices). This ideology will be viewed through both the lens of enslaved Momma Ancestors as they toiled in plantation fields, and through the feel of middle passaged ancestors calling forth nourishment, wisdom, and joy from their ocean floor graveyard. Black women are the insistence of many coded chapters, shades of black feet, divine feelings, quiet joys and spirited pathways. From the melancholy of the blues to the nurturing blues of the ocean deep, the stories of Momma Ancestors reside at life-abundant crossroads.
Regina Y. Evans, a native of Oakland, Ca, is an award winning Social Justice Playwright/Actor, Poet, Entrepreneur, Costume Designer, Installation Artist, and Filmmaker. Her creative work largely focuses upon the healing of Black girls and women, as well as the historical commodification of the Black female womb.
She is the Founder of Regina's Door, 2014-2021, an Oakland, Ca, based vintage store/creative arts healing space for young survivors of sex trafficking, as well as a Co-Founder (with Amara Tabor Smith) of Conjure And Mend, Oakland, Ca, 2018-2021, a sewing salon created for young survivors of sex trafficking to learn the art of costume designing. In 2021 she relocated to NYC to pursue her artistic endeavors.
