CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL: Notes From Black Wall Street

by Crystal Z Campbell

Notes from Black Street is an ongoing series by Oklahoma-based artist, Crystal Z Campbell. Culled from institutional archives, these highly textured painted collages abstract and fabulate Black life in Greenwood (Tulsa, Oklahoma) before, during, and after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Riffing on the role of Black portraiture in photography and painting in broader questions of representation, the use of these images foreground the desire for self-fashioning and self-determination precisely one hundred years after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The narrative is always at stake: will justice enter the frame upon a century?

Crystal Z Campbell, A Bird in the Hand, Mixed-Media on Wood, 20x30 inches, ©2019Crystal Z Campbell

Crystal Z Campbell is a visual artist, writer and current Harvard Radcliffe Film Study Center & David and Roberta Logie Fellow (2020-2021), living and working in Oklahoma.

Crystal Z Campbell, Soft, Receptive, and Absolute, Mixed-Media on Wood, 30x20 inches, ©2019Crystal Z Campbell

Crystal Z Campbell, I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard All my Life, I Want a Peek at the Back, Mixed-Media on Wood, 30x20 inches, ©2019Crystal Z Campbell