Review by Mitchell Oldham.
Coupling innovation and exploration in the sciences with those of the arts represents an enlightened approach to advancing childhood and adolescent development. And for more than a half century, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry has been using this approach to accomplish a host of noble and far-seeing objectives. Recognizing the achievements of Black creatives in science, technology, engineering, the arts and math certainly counts as one. But exposing the next generation of Black Americans, generation Alpha, to the wide vistas of opportunity within the STE(A)M arena also stands as a preeminent goal in its Black Creativity program.
A crown jewel of the three- month long initiative and celebrations, the juried Black Creativity 2025 Art Exhibition brings to the fore Black virtuosity from an aesthetic context. Often cited as the longest running exhibit of African American art in the country, it brings together the work of young developing artists in the metropolitan area and that of highly accomplished professionals from throughout the United States. Noteworthy for its profusion of mediums, techniques, and distinctive artistic perspectives, this year’s exhibition overflows with character and variety.
The show still holds true to its original purpose when it began in 1970 under the name Black Esthetics. At that time, Black artists wanted to create a vehicle that would pay “tribute to the culture, heritage and contributions of Black artists” like themselves. That recognition was glaringly absent in the larger society. They also wanted to telegraph ethnic and community pride. Rechristened Black Creativity in 1984, the mission was broadened to “celebrate the contributions of Black professionals in the sciences.”
Five-plus decades later, it’s astonishing to see the breadth of expression and message represented in Black Creativity’s 2025 art extravaganza. Much of that wonder rises from the exceptionalism of the art. Community and cultural pride have always been and will continue to be the driving force within the exhibit. Art reflects how someone sees the world and themselves and consequently is inescapably personal. But it’s the number of ways such perceptions can be communicated through art that makes the works in this year’s exhibition so striking and intriguing.
In his own words, artist Ed Watkins “draws from life.” His work represents aspects and people who figure significantly in his existence. His entries in Black Creativity 2025 are penetrating studies of individuals. In Take Me To The Water, he captures a man, divine text in hand, standing with spiritual authority in a baptismal pool. As serene and composed as the image presents, its impact is powerful, moving and extremely evocative. Filling the background, a beautiful stained-glass window is adorned with depictions of people in procession; figures from the past who’ve gone through this same ritual to gain redemption. It’s an image of continuity that links the past and present with a sacred thread.
As Cool As Can Be by Darin Triplett takes a very different look at life and how it can be lived. A work from a series the artist calls his passion project, As Cool As Can Be celebrates joy in self and realized autonomy. A self that’s neither defined nor limited by race or proclivity, but driven purely by one’s own individual psychological construct and motivations. Like so many of the works in the show, it exemplifies what artists work so hard to convey—authentic and relatable emotion and feelings. Here, it’s the ebullience that comes with true freedom.
Other pieces in the show make you work a little harder to decode their messages. The quiet beauty of Ron Beckham’s watercolor, Fieldworker, falls in that category. It turns demanding, often reviled physical labor into something of arresting beauty by rendering it in a radiant haze of soft color.
Working “at the intersection of the mundane and the universal,” Josue Bessiake uses various mediums to express his view of the world. You get a sense of the breadth of his scope in A Breaker’s Anatomy I, an abstract acrylic monoprint that seems to skew toward the cosmic and pervasive. It’s an enchanting and lovely piece that gently draws you in and then keeps you fixated. Working as a portal to the past and the future, one of the messages Breaker’s Anatomy I seems to foment most intently is one of possibility.
There’s a tranquil majesty that drapes over Zen Diva Noire’s full figure profile, Shanti, and her other contributions to the exhibition. Classic beauty reinterpreted; the piece’s spirit of ascendance and completion provokes one to aspire to reach the type of fulfillment embodied in the work.
Confident self-awareness is conveyed much differently in Homewood-Flossmoor ’s Javiyah Israel’s Unbothered. The expression the young artist immortalizes in her close-up study is as timeless as it is globally recognizable. To have it communicated so well by such a young artist portends well for arts bounty in the future.
Also in the Teen Category, Jasmine McGhee’s photography makes us look at the everyday with new eyes. Or, through the perceptive insightful eyes of an artist. In Chicago, she turns the grind and tension of city traffic at dusk into a composition of order, purpose and something akin to lyrical grace.
With close to 100 artists and more than 150 art pieces in this year’s show, the array of voices and the variety of impressions, ideas and concepts conveyed visually in this exhibition is spectacular. From the intense reflection Reggie McFly’s Black Bein’ generates to the awe inspired by DonCee Coulter’s magnificently executed Indiscernible Faces, the journey through both the general and teen galleries incites delight, provokes robust thought and makes you only crave more.
The Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition continues through April 27 at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, 5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive. For tickets and more information, visit the museum’s website.
Mitchell Oldham, a self-acknowledged culture vulture, has been enjoying writing about Chicago's dynamic arts scene for over a decade.
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