Journey of a Soul: The Life and Work of Betty Blayton Taylor

February 6, 2017 by Mariamma Kambon

“I think that every child should have an opportunity to explore the arts, just like they have an opportunity to learn how to write and to count. A youngster who has had exposure to the arts is a youngster who is going to be more creative, more capable of learning; will have more enthusiasm for learning and particularly, will be in a position to explore potential, as opposed to the rote learning that goes into A-B-C. If you allow a […]

Categories: Personalities, Uncategorized • Tags: all is one, Alleyne Houser Blayton, Arnold Prince, art, artist, artist-in-residence, Barbara Blayton Richardson, Betty Blayton, Betty Blayton Taylor, Bruton Heights, Buddhism, Charlotte Amalie, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Children's Art Carnival, creative, culture, Dr. James Blayton, family, Film, Harlem, Harlem Textile Works, Jean-Michel Basquiat, LeRoy Clarke, Mariamma Kambon, meditation, Michael Kelly Williams, New York City, North Carolina, Omar Blayton, painter, painting, Palmer Memorial Institute, photography, play, portraits, sculptor, Sedalia, self-reflective, St. Thomas, studio museum of harlem, The Bronx, Trinidad and Tobago, Virginia, Williamsburg, Zevilla Preston Jackson

Whosestory? The Privilege of Definition After the Colonial Encounter

March 28, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

  An indigenous elder is confronted with a young, European explorer on a mission to find a powerful, legendary plant (yakruna) in the Amazon forest. Probing questions from the visitor plummet the elder into grief. By nightfall he is weeping for the failure of his memory. He knows that he has arrived at the most tragic state in which a human being can exist. He is without time, without the knowledge and stories of his people. He is a chullachaqui, […]

Categories: Exhibition, Film, Lecture, Uncategorized • Tags: african art, alternative worldview, amazon, art, Artists on Artworks, bias, black and white, chullachaqui, Ciro Guerra, colonialism, David Museum, El Abrazo de la Serpiente, Film, fine art, Hank Willis Thomas, independent film, indigenous, Kongo, Mariamma Kambon, memory, metropolitan museum of art, museum, New York, photography, power figure, privilege, the Met, Trinidad and Tobago, violence, whosestory, yakruna

Ashes and Embers, a film by Haile Gerima

March 11, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

For my uncle who was sent to Vietnam a whole man but returned to his family incomplete  “It is for life. PTSD is for life,” she told me. “That person will never, ever get better.” The faces around the dimly lit table grew serious momentarily as this reality sank in. It was only a warning about a date with a man from the navy who might have been to a recent war. The pause was fleeting before the faces all […]

Categories: Film, Uncategorized • Tags: African American, African Diaspora, American Fruit African Roots, Angela Davis, Ashes and Embers, Black Power, David Rudder, Elizabeth Catlett, Film, Films at the Schomburg, Haile Gerima, Harlem, lynching, Madman's Rant, Malcolm X, Mariamma Kambon, movie, New York, Patrice Lumumba, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, soldier, The Schomburg Center, The Sharecropper, Veteran, Vietnam, Vietnam vet, war