Njaimeh Njie’s “Lifting Liberty” exhibit at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater is a tribute to the beauty of East Liberty and a love letter to Black culture in Pittsburgh past, present and future.
The installation looks at Black-led spaces in conversation with urban renewal. Through Njie’s research, she depicts expression and creativity within notable spaces like the Howe School of Dance and the Shadow Lounge. Some of the scenes show rehearsals, a jam session or a celebration, with the faces of people masked in glitter so the viewer can focus on figures in relationship to each other and how they are connected, versus what they look like.
In addition to the space-based collage artwork, Njie incorporates aerial land maps of the neighborhood and layered multimedia photographs reflecting urban renewal — asking the viewer to consider who benefits when a place is transformed.
Njie grew up in Stanton Heights and remembers taking the 94A down Penn Avenue with her sister and being enamored by the vibrancy. She recalls seeing the many small businesses, including David’s Shoes.
“It felt very alive, and now, at 37, I have seen East Liberty change many times over,” Njie said.
The Kelly Strayhorn Theater reached out to her to document a 100-year history of Black culture in the neighborhood, starting in 1920, and she said that finding the information was very elusive.
“To find the places that no longer exist that were integral to Black life, you gotta dig a little. Thank goodness for The Pittsburgh Courier, the Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris archive and word of mouth,” she said.
For familiar places like the Kingsley Center, envisioning an image was easy because she had spent a lot of time there growing up. However, for other spaces like Liberty Gardens Black ballroom, she didn’t feel comfortable creating an image since she had never been there.
“I am just overcome by what Njaimeh has created here, not just with her work, but with her artistic voice and authorship and her words about how we are the archive, the libraries and the anchors. While all of this chaos is happening around us, it is up to us to be what is passed on,” East Liberty native Damon Young said at the Feb. 27 opening reception.
“I am certainly proud. I’ve watched her grow, and every time, she takes it up another notch,” said Saihou Njie, Njie’s father and a traditional Batik (textile) artist. “She’s a great thinker who is really proud of her race and her people and is very community-oriented, and that reflects in the work.”
Lauren Lynch-Novakovic took in, through the aerial maps, that more trees, houses and stores supported the community in the past.
“It has been equal parts astonishing and disturbing to watch the rapid gentrification and displacement that has occurred here,” she said. “The amount of places that are just gone is really disheartening and (they are) being replaced with spaces that do not feel like they are for us (Black people) that all tend to have the same gentrifier font.”
The exhibit was a trip down memory lane for Denine Hood, 72. She remembers taking her daughter to the Kingsley Center and has memories of the Selma Burke Arts Center. But there were many things throughout the exhibit that she was unaware of, despite living around the area for so long.
“I enjoyed the way she depicted the pieces of urban renewal … that they were just living their lives and unsuspecting as the changes were taking place around them,” Hood said.
Njie said that everyone is an archive.
“We all have experiences of people we know and places we have been, and sometimes we take for granted that everyone else doesn’t have that experience. We should all value what we know, be willing to share that, because things change and there is not always a record to keep track of the intangibles of people’s lives,” Njie said.
“Lifting Liberty” will be on display through May 31.