Iowa City’s Black Liberation Space gets international audience through documentary

IOWA CITY — As artists toiled with paint, sewing machines or the tools of their trade in a downtown Iowa City space last year, their unity in the face of turmoil wove something new from their neglected humanity: freedom.

With every stroke of a brush, every thread of a bobbin and every snap of the shutter, people of color experienced a form of autonomy and freedom many had never known before coming into the Black Liberation Space.

“They believed that they were being liberated in that moment. They had a space to go do art,” said Andre’ Wright, co-founder of the Humanize My Hoodie movement and the Black Liberation Space. “They had a space to be in communion with others. A space to learn. Full autonomy.”

As brown paper covered the windows of the Revival storefront temporarily given to them, Black, brown and Indigenous people from a diversity of backgrounds discovered a space where creativity fostered camaraderie, healing, resilience and inspiration without disruption from other cultures.

In the middle of a pandemic and the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, it was a “rest haven for safety,” Wright said. “If you knew about it, you could come and jam with us.”

From May to November 2020, the only ones who knew about it were the ones who worked there. Now, thanks to a documentary making rounds at international film festivals, the world is getting a glimpse at what true liberation can look like for minorities making their way through a world not designed for them.

“The most striking images are ones where the people using the space are looking directly into the camera,” the filmmaker said. “To take the medium and demand visibility … to give people space to stare directly into (viewers’ eyes) to demand they be seen is more powerful than any images I could catch.”

The art

“We created what we envisioned in our heads to humanize ourselves as a whole community of people who needed to be humanized,” Wright said. “It was my greatest love of giving back to a community that had always felt hate here. That’s what the film showed.”

And with each clothing line or art piece they made, the founder and activist saw humanity restored to the 15 or 20 people using the space each day, allowing them to be who they were.

For artists like Roneshia Robichaux, a Louisiana woman who attended the University of Iowa as a fine arts graduate student, it brought familiarity to a strange place.

“I got comfortable making work with people similar to me” in looks and aspirations, she said. “It made it easier to be comfortable with who I am being in a city like Iowa City.”

A former New Orleans resident, the move to a white majority city presented a culture shock. The antidote was a space that made her comfortable in her own skin.

“I was more willing to open up and be myself when I was around those people,” she said. “We were able to relate on multiple levels. … It made me want to branch out more (in art.)”

Originally a portrait painter, Robichaux started to dabble in screen printing clothing lines with Wright, a fashion designer whose Humanize My Hoodie movement produces a line that facilitates conversations to reconcile a long history of racism.

She’s just one example, Wright said, of how artists were able to hone their artistic talent while learning about their history and discovering new forms of art they might not have considered before. A space with shared understandings allowed them to realize new goals by bouncing ideas off others.

And in a spot where students could even draw on the walls, a liberating mindset taught them that anything is possible.

The documentary

“The place was buzzing with care,” said Trevon Jakaar Coleman, whose documentary of the space has been featured in this year’s Paris Independent Film Festival and the New York Independent Cinema Awards. “Care would be the main force behind everything in the space.”

A film and video production graduate student at the University of Iowa, Coleman was invited to the space to paint, but soon learned there was too much happening to not document it.

“Creativity … allows you to be a warrior to speak from a different language,” Wright said. “(There’s a) sense of therapy, freedom in being creative.”

Through fly-on-the-wall footage shot on 16 mm film combined with interviews asking artists what liberation meant, Coleman learned that there weren’t enough spaces like the Black Liberation Space.

“The most striking images are ones where the people using the space are looking directly into the (16 mm) camera. The technology behind development and processing (for 16 mm film) was made for people with lighter skin than ours,” Coleman said. “To take the medium and demand visibility … to give people space to stare directly into (viewers’ eyes) to demand they be seen is more powerful than any images I could catch.”

The technology, first developed in the 1920s, was not made to capture contrasts with darker skin, he said. If a lighter-skinned person and darker-skinned person were in the same frame, the darker person would be underexposed.

In a city called the “greatest little city for the arts,” the artist said Black and Indigenous arts need to be explicitly included.

“The work isn’t done yet. Spaces like this need to exist in a permanent capacity,” he said. “Not just here in predominantly white spaces.”

“It allows us to carve out our own space and be in control of that space without having authoritative figures controlling how or in what way we express ourselves,” Robichaux said.

The legacy

Though the space is no longer open, its memory will live on in film. Its legacy, Wright said, will live on in the work artists continue to produce.

“The Black Liberation Space was uber special. It probably will never happen again, just because of the politics,” Wright said.

But there are several programs stemming from Humanize My Hoodie and the Black Liberation Movement that will carry the torch, too.

A homework hotline connecting mentor college students with children for tutoring will give students both a connection to someone who looks like them and the opportunity to improve their chances for success with better grades.

Wright is also passionate about making sure children of color have access to the graphic design market, of which he said Black folks comprise only about 3 percent.

Every week, students meet for virtual graphic design classes. Thanks to a partnership with Warner Music and Humanize My Hoodie, students have the opportunity to design band merchandise for Atlantic Records artists.

Wright has successfully challenged companies like Adobe to provide equity through access to expensive software needed to gain experience in the field with an abundant supply of well-paying jobs.

In establishing a foundation for the next generation, he’s giving them both a means to succeed and a way of life that promotes dogged resilience in a community that has endured generations of trauma from the violence of racism.

“Creativity … allows you to be a warrior to speak from a different language,” he said. “(There’s a) sense of therapy, freedom in being creative.”

And in a world where he said the conversation on racism is largely performative, the movement that started with Humanize My Hoodie accomplishes inner development, not just an outer plasticity.

After the murder of George Floyd — which Wright refers to as a ‘lynching’ — the conversation evolved from humanizing Black Americans to uncovering their definition of liberation.

For white allies, Humanize My Hoodie holds workshops that not only educate, but hold participants accountable to action.

“If we don’t have ownership, we can’t be inclusive,” he said. “We’re still in bondage, just a different form of it. The only way we’re going to get ahead is by doing it ourselves.”

People of color are at a disadvantage when it comes to building blocks, Wright said. With that comes discouragement.

“I don’t think people really believe that the liberation can happen,” he said. “We’ve been beaten down so much.”

But seeing examples like him and Humanize My Hoodie co-founder Jason Sole, children learn they have more hope out of a vicious cycle than becoming an athlete. Sole said the legacy lies in resilience, education and friendship.

“People see hope, something different,” he said. “It makes me believe I can do whatever I want to do.”

He’s learned that nothing can stop a vision that’s cultivated over time.

“We’re two kids from the bottom — poverty, prison. Now we're the ones giving inspiration for our towns,” Sole said.

Though the future of another physical space is uncertain, Wright would like to create an endowment to purchase — not rent — a space for Black liberation in the arts.

“The Black Liberation Space was uber special. It probably will never happen again, just because of the politics,” he said. “(Community and city leaders) think they want it to happen, but when they see it, they get afraid.”

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