Opening Reception: Saturday, March 16, 2024, 2 to 5 p.m.
Artist Talk and Workshop: March 28, 2024, 6 to 8 p.m.
Archived photographs of her grand, great grand and second great grandparents are juxtaposed against portraits of herself, as she acknowledges her past while looking toward the future. Familial Landscapes is an introspective journey of remembrance of what came before on those lands, while (re)imagining the meaning of being present now, in place and time.
April is a photographic based artist and native Houstonian. She creatively combines ancestral photographs and decades of research tracing her roots in Texas to create environmental portraits on lands with familial connection from the time of enslavement to the present. Pairing artifacts left behind like jewelry, bricks and inherent knowledge, with visions of the current landscape, April weaves together her story of becoming the black woman she is. Her art practice converges at the four-way intersection of inherent memory, tethered connection to the landscape, ancestral and historical investigation and lived experience.
In Familial Landscapes (Re)imagined, April shifts the traditional environmental gaze to (re)focus on the seven generations of her people which inhabited the rural lands Texas long before and aims to celebrate their stories through that lens. From discovering her second great
grandfather Emanuel Roberts acquired over 200 acres of land in Wharton in 1893, to finding the final resting place in Muldoon of her fourth great grandmother Amanda, April strives to (re)imagine and (re)write the visual narrative of the African American in Texas. Familial Landscapes also intersects the work of The Witness Series, a female led and curated art experience which explores the profound historical connection that communities of color have with land and invites the (re)turn of those communities to the bounty of green spaces across Texas.
