Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and the Flight above injustice

Tempo di lettura: 3 minuti

How to contribute to social justice activism through art? In Activism will save us from hate (and extinction) I set out my aim to address all the forms of activism that I have experienced and encountered throughout my life and to collect all the experiences you would like to share with me so that together we can spread the awareness that another possible world can be built in every moment of our lives, through small and great acts.
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is a Black Artist who has chosen to invest her life in a commitment to social justice, creating works of art mainly through oil painting through which she depicts the various ways in which oppressed people experience their environment. I talk about her and her project Stop telling women to smile in Catcalling-street harrasment.CATCALLING – STREET HARRASMENT

 

Born in Oklahoma City and residing in Brooklyn, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh was the first artist-in-residence at the New York City Commission on Human Rights for 18 months, during which time she created a series of street-art projects throughout thecity that addressed racism towards Black people and gender harassment.

 

 

 

The latest of her extraordinary creative projects is called Flight and is a mural series inspired by the myth of the Flying Africans passed down orally through the generations by Black Africans in slavery in the United States and taken up by various authors. Also taken up by Toni Morrison in Songs of Solomon, the myth of Solomon/Surgaman ‘The Flying African’ is the folk tale featuring a sorcerer or seer who encourages and helps African slaves flying to Africa to free themselves from oppression. The tale symbolizes the possibility of transformation and the achievement of freedom.
To realize this large-scale, life-size series of murals of Black People floating in the air, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh conducted interviews in which she asked people about their idea of flight and how they think we relate to it today.
She then held photo sessions with the women and men depicted in her murals. As in her other projects, Tatyana supports her works with a text in which she quotes Black authors and the words of the people interviewed and portrayed.
People float high above violence, discrimination and abuse.

“In this project, I am exploring the air as environment, a space that we might occupy or traverse”.

On 27 October, the first mural featuring a Black Woman floating in the air, 100 ft in the air, was inaugurated in Philadelphia. Through her social profiles, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh expressed her excitement about this first work in the series, since the building on which it is painted is the same one in which she lived until she was 17 years old. She also considers the series as special because she has always wanted to join the ranks of artists and writers who have used the mythology of the Flying African.
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh perfectly represents the reality of artivism because her art gives voice and visibility to oppressed people, and she does so through her own direct involvement, her choice of life being an activist, thus being openly partisan about social injustice and acting for change starting with herself.

If you ever pass through Philadelphia, go to 1228 Spruce Street and look up to wonder. Then stop and read the text that follows this extraordinary masterpiece:

“I let go of what has weighed me down. Light as a feather, I ride the wind. Like Black folks have always done. Flying free above the structures built to confine us.”