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Jennessa Burks art curator

From left, Stacy Lord, Laura Marotta, Jennessa Burks and Chris Kazarian at Creative Hub Worcester’s Aurora Gallery.

Jennessa Burks is the lead curator for Creative Hub’s upcoming show, “Nonetheless, We Amplify Resilience Together Here.” The opening will serve as a celebration of Black culture through music, food, dance, spoken word and visual arts, and will take place at the Aurora Gallery on Main Street from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct 17.

How did you become the lead

curator of this exhibition? I got involved with Laura Marotta and Stacy Lord, from Creative Hub Worcester, through an exhibit they had at the Aurora Gallery titled, “Otherness.” That was in 2020, pre-pandemic.

Were you a participating artist

or the curator? I was a participating artist and I loved what they were talking about as far as themes moving forward. As an artist and as someone from Worcester who sees the value of the opportunities that they’re creating, I asked them to let me know if there was anything I could do to support. So, you grew up here? For the most part. I was born here and grew up here from the age of 9. I lived in the city until about four years ago, for a total of almost 20 years.

That makes you a lifer. I know how prideful Worcester is. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say I’m from Worcester anymore since I left.

I think you’re safe. Where’d you

go to high school? Doherty.

Me too. We must have been there at the same time. Were

you an artist back then? I definitely was an art nerd. I spent my extra study in the art room for at least a couple of years. During my senior year, I was working with someone from RISD and I really contemplated going to art school. The way my cards played out, I ended up putting down my brushes for the better part of 10 years and started doing art again just a couple of years ago. now. I taught at Elm Park Community School before that.

I think teaching is its own art form. So, what’s the theme of

the upcoming show? The best part is how community involved the show has become. We would put out a call asking for members. We asked, “Who wants to create this? What are your visions?” And, as a result, everything was done very collaboratively. All voices were heard in meetings. Folks were able to join late, even though we had already gotten the ball rolling. We decided we wanted to engage artists and their work around equity. We knew “equity” would be a big and broad theme. We made sure to specify that we were talking about amplifying the traditions, the cultures and the resilience of the Black community. From there, we built a curation team. I took the lead with art and we have since brought in Chris Kazarian for the lead with music and performances. Live performers will be outside during the show in a space across from the gallery. This will allow us to

DYLAN AZARI

distance outside and take even more precautions. Inside, there’s ample space to be more than six feet apart. There’s a strict cap of 25 people in total at a time.

My seventh-grade students have had a lot of questions about racial justice — I’ve been very impressed by the resulting discussions. How do you tackle anti-racism with fourth-grad-

ers? Cambridge is very progressive. These conversations are had openly. District-wide, we are encouraged to talk about systemic racism, white supremacy culture, the way it shows up in our schools, and the impact it has on our Black and brown students. We still have lots of work to do, but this is not the first time the parents, students and staff have heard it. In fourth grade, we tackle “hard histories.” To start the year, we’re engaging in a poetry unit to correspond with the book “Brown Girl Dreaming.” I’m in the process of writing a letter to families that explains how we will be teaching “hard histories” and we’ll be teaching them truthfully.

Has the presidential election impacted your vision for the

show? We didn’t plan on coordinating our show with the election, but it certainly didn’t hurt our enthusiasm. We’re a pretty passionate group when it comes to the fact that people need to go out and vote. If our show is a reminder to the community to go out and vote for your voice to be heard, that’s wonderful. We want to center some of the issues that are going on in the current state of our nation right now, especially with the Black Lives Matter movement. We’re having these conversations that used to be kind of taboo not so long ago. We really feel like it is important to continue to shine light on equality as we move into this election. It may not have been the motivating factor for the show, but it definitely was something that continued to come up during our planning discussions.

Do you have a piece featured?

All of my art really focuses on uplifting BIPOC folks. I do a lot of portraits, so I have several pieces in my collections that speak to the theme of the show and I will put in a couple, but for me personally, it was more important to highlight other talents. I’ve been working really hard, less on the creation of art, but more on the curation of other artists. OCTOBER 15 Can we expect mostly Worcester artists? I would say threequarters of the artists are from Worcester, and the rest are Massachusetts based. There are a few Boston artists for whom social justice is the basis of their work and we knew they had to be included. I’m captivated by this piece you attached in your email. It’s a painting by Sharif Muhammad called “We are Kings.” Yes, Sharif has four pieces going into the show. He’s a great example of an artist that’s from outside of the city, but you cannot look at his work without seeing how perfectly it fits into the show. 21, 2020 WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM – Sarah Connell Sanders 23