Art Exhibit Provides Solace and Perspective 20 Years After the Crown Heights Riot

Home Brooklyn Life Art Exhibit Provides Solace and Perspective 20 Years After the Crown Heights Riot

A gallery in Bedford-Stuyvesant features works by artists from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds

Crown Heights Gold opened at the Skylight Gallery on July 28 to a crowd of spectators. (Andie Park/The Brooklyn Ink)
 

On the wall of an art gallery in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn hang two photographs. One shows a black family gathered on a stoop, the other a Hasidic family gathered in a park. They are meant to represent the families that Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum might have had by now, had they lived.

The Crown Heights riot of August 1991 stemmed from the death of seven-year-old Cato, the son of Guyanese immigrants, who was killed by a vehicle driven by Yosef Lifsh, a 22-year-old Lubavitch Hasidic Jew in the motorcade of the Lubavitcher rebbe. The incident sparked three days of conflict between the blacks and Jews of Crown Heights and resulted in the stabbing death of 29-year-old Rosenbaum, who was Hasidic but unrelated to the igniting event.

“What If” by Jamel Shabazz in background, at Crown Heights Gold, Skylight Gallery. (Andie Park/The Brooklyn Ink)

The photographs, under the title “What If,” are part of Crown Heights Gold, a multimedia art exhibit that marks the 20th anniversary of the Crown Heights riot. With works by 23 artists in such genres as sculpture, video, acrylic on canvas, oil on canvas, acrylic on wood, mixed media, spray paint, and photography, the exhibit at the Skylight Gallery bears witness to the turbulence of the time and points to the hope of reconciliation.

“About healing,” said Dexter Wimberly, 37, African-American, and curator of Crown Heights Gold, describing the exhibit. “You know how when you get a cut, and before it heals, it itches like crazy, becomes really uncomfortable before it actually heals? Well, this is what that is.”

Jamel Shabazz, a 51-year-old artist born and raised in Brooklyn by African-American parents, put together the two photographs to visualize what was lost when Cato and Rosenbaum died. For one, Shabazz approached a Hasidic family after a religious ceremony they recently had in Prospect Park, and because he was respectful, he said, he was able to photograph them. The other, of a black family gathered on their stoop, was taken a few years ago.

“Crown Rest” by Carl “Musa” Hixson in foreground, at Crown Heights Gold, Skylight Gallery. (Andie Park/The Brooklyn Ink)

“The expression in both photographs is almost identical,” said Shabazz, pointing out the warmth and delight in the eyes of his subjects, the absence of arrogance. “The human family has similar desires and are separated by misinterpretations of one another.”

“Blind Lion” by Yashua Klos, at Crown Heights Gold, Skylight Gallery. (Andie Park/The Brooklyn Ink)

Preparing for the exhibit, Wimberly asked the artists to consider the larger context of the riot, contemporaneous events that might shed light on what happened. The Crown Heights riot, for instance, predated the Los Angeles riots by eight months, triggered by the acquittal of white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, a black motorist.

“So this was sort of the indicator of where this country was,” Wimberley said, referring to the Crown Heights riot.

“The reality is that there are many things that are much better, and there are many things that are not,” he said. “And I wouldn’t feel that I was being genuine as a curator to do an exhibition about how great things are in Crown Heights, because everything in Crown Heights is not great.”

“Night Shift” by Jerome Lagarrigue in background, at Crown Heights Gold, Skylight Gallery. (Andie Park/The Brooklyn Ink)

The exhibit, according to Wimberly, calls for attention to what might have gone inadequately discussed, and events “in danger of becoming folklore or legend.”

All of the artists in the exhibit are natives or residents of Brooklyn. They come from various backgrounds – Caribbean, Jewish, Indian, Haitian, Asian, Canadian, French, African-American – and reflect diverse racial and cultural perspectives. Wimberly is also a native of Brooklyn and was living a few blocks away when the riot broke out at Utica Avenue and President Street.

Today, Crown Heights is more peaceful, but as Wimberly’s experience hints, still lacking in interaction among races and cultures. Although he had put out a borough-wide call for art submissions through the Brooklyn Arts Council and BRIC Rotunda Gallery, Wimberly received none from Hasidic artists.

The exhibit includes two Jewish artists, though neither are Hasidic. Not in a position to go search out artists for the exhibit, Wimberly had counted on artists being involved in the community and aware of its events. The Brooklyn Arts Council and BRIC Rotunda Gallery have been around for over 30 years and, on websites and in newsletters, promote new opportunities for artists living or working in Brooklyn. As free resources, they are open to anyone.

“Untitled” by Kambui Olujimi, at Crown Heights Gold, Skylight Gallery. (Andie Park/The Brooklyn Ink)

Baruch Tauber, who is Hasidic and has lived in Crown Heights all of his 26 years, attended the exhibit’s opening reception on July 28. He was puzzled by the absence of Hasidic artists, but praised the exhibit as the first step toward more collaborative art projects.

“I think this is a huge step and compliment to what artists can do for their community, and I thought the collection was impressive,” Tauber wrote in an email message.

With his abiding interest in art and community, Tauber sees artists as vital in “creating a platform for dialogue about issues that are otherwise kept under wraps” and hopes to build a collective of local artists from all backgrounds, including Hasidic.

That collective might include Yocheved Sidof, 32, who said of the exhibit, “I would’ve liked to have been involved in that, for sure.”

Sidof has lived in Crown Heights for 11 years and is Hasidic. She is also a photographer and filmmaker. Not currently involved with Brooklyn’s arts organizations, she had not heard of the exhibit or its call for submissions.

“Sole Tree” by Fiona Gardner and Kenya Robinson in foreground, at Crown Heights Gold, Skylight Gallery. (Andie Park/The Brooklyn Ink)

Fiona Gardner, an artist in the exhibit who is 34 and Jewish, collaborated with Kenya Robinson, another artist in the exhibit who is black and 34 years old. The two created a piece with a discrete component in the gallery and an interactive component in the community. The former is a memorial made up of shoes and candles; the latter consists of shoe racks in the streets of Crown Heights, as an exchange for shoes, to impart the idea of wearing and walking in each other’s shoes.

“You don’t know until you walk in another person’s shoes,” Robinson said about understanding between races and cultures. “But you can, if you take a moment, get a glimpse of that. I’m not saying you’re going to have the exact experience, but if there is an exchange, you can actually get a glimpse of that experience, and maybe it won’t feel so alien.”

Delphine Fawundu-Buford, a photographer and 39-year-old life-long resident of Crown Heights, born to immigrants from Sierra Leone, agreed. “Nothing is more liberating than being an educated person about the different people who walk the earth,” she said.

“Tree Planting” by Delphine Fawundu-Buford in background, at Crown Heights Gold, Skylight Gallery. (Andie Park/The Brooklyn Ink)

One of Fawundu-Buford’s photographs shows a black boy and a Hasidic boy standing close together, holding a shovel, planting a tree in memory of Cato and Rosenbaum. Richard Green of the Crown Heights Youth Collective took the picture of his then-five-year-old son and the young Hasidic boy. Decades later, Fawundu-Buford photographed Green’s hand holding the old picture, incorporating it into a photographic series for the exhibit.

Crown Heights Gold runs through October 31. Wimberly was drawn to the name for the exhibit as a “metaphor or analogy for the preciousness of community.” Last year, he curated the The Gentrification of Brooklyn at MoCADA, the Museum of the Contemporary African Diaspora Arts in Brooklyn. After years as a consultant for emerging artists, Wimberly strayed into curating exhibits as a means to expose the artists to the public. But then, he saw potential in art exhibits to address bigger ideas and issues.

Put another way, Sidof described the role of an artist as being compassionate about what it means to be a person.

“We all have the same needs, same desires; we all want to be loved and accepted and belong,” said Sidof, echoing Shabazz. “And we all feel misunderstood, most of the time.”

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