WITNESS – WACO Theater Center

What do we witness when we see through the eyes of Black women?

Co-Curated by Tina Knowles Lawson and Genel Ambrose, WITNESS is a visual art experience featuring work by Los Angeles-based Black women and non-binary artists who project their vision of the world, society, community, and themselves through their art.

Join us for an immersive art exhibit featuring installations, portraiture, and intimately captured moving and still images across mediums. This exhibition explores the intersectional vantage point of the Black femme-identifying artist—inviting the viewer to bear witness to what they may not otherwise see on their own.

Featured Artists

Alexis Hunley, Amber J. Phillips, Amber Evangelista, April Bey, Cara Elise Taylor, Dana Davenport, Dee Williams, Deun Ivory, Elise Peterson, House of Aama, Liam Woods, Sade Ndya, Sophia Nahli Allison, Stephanie Mei-Ling

Exhibition Partners

GOOD MIRRORS: is a cultural institution committed to accurately reflecting Black women as whole and dignified beings.

Black Women Photographers: is a global community and database of Black women and non-binary photographers. #HireBlackWomenPhotographers.

Exhibition Hours

The gallery is open Friday – Sunday from 12 pm – 6 pm beginning April 1 through May 27. Reservations required or call (818) 400-1151 to schedule an appointment.

Exhibition Sponsors

DIGITAL PROGRAM

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Upcoming Events

Meet Curator Genel Ambrose

Genel T. Ambrose is a multidisciplinary artist, cultural curator, and writer. As an artist, she creates art and experiences that interrogate memory and the role that technology plays in preserving and sharing the narratives of Black women and girls. Genel is the Founder of GOOD MIRRORS, a cultural institution committed to accurately reflecting Black women as whole and dignified beings. Genel is currently a Create Change Artist-in-Residence at the Laundromat Project and a member of New Inc, the New Museum’s incubator program for professionals working at the intersection of art, technology and design. A graduate of The New School, Genel received her MFA in Creative Writing, Nonfiction and a dual bachelors in Journalism and Sociology from New York University. Genel has published works with i-D magazine, VICE, and Garage Magazine, among other publications.

Meet the Artists

Alexis Hunley

Alexis Hunley is a freelance photographer based in Los Angeles, CA. Alexis has created documentary, commercial, and editorial work for a variety of clients including: The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, TIME, Best Buy, Pinterest, Essence, and Airbnb. Most recently I was named a finalist for The Aftermath Project grant and had the distinct pleasure of being part of the collaborative exhibition Fresh As__: Photographic Meditations from the Black Vanguard (Regarding A New Esthetic) at the Los Angeles Center of Photography.

Amber Evangelista

Amber Valley Evangelista is a full-time mom of four children, a photographer, and a curator. Her specialized interest in vintage film cameras and Polaroids brings a nostalgic tone to her captured images. This passion for photography eventually led to her starting her own company. She is the founder of Valley in Film. A company that focuses on portraiture and other creative assistance, including fashion, campaigns, and workshops.

Amber J. Phillips

Amber J. Phillips is a storyteller, filmmaker, and creative director. She creates world building narratives using warm visuals and vulnerable performances through her lens of being a fat Black queer femme auntie from the Midwest. Amber recently released her first short film, Abundance about the limitations and radical possibilities of identity. Amber is the producer, writer, and performer of Abundance that was most recently a 2021 BlackStar Film Festival selection and won the audience award for Best Short Narrative.

April Bey

April Bey grew up in The Bahamas (New Providence) and now resides and works in Los Angeles, CA as a visual artist and art educator. Bey’s interdisciplinary artwork is an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian culture, feminism, generational theory, social media, AfroFuturism, AfroSurrealism, post-colonialism and constructs of race within supremacist systems.

Cara Elise Taylor

Cara Elise Taylor is a Black woman from the Midwest, raised by Afro-Latino parents, making images that see the depth and multitudes of Black people globally. The themes in her work include nostalgia, history, Blackness, health & wellness, community, food/cooking, and Caribbean/Afro-Latin culture. Her motivation for photography has always been the importance of preserving history by making an archive of the world as it is now, through the divine and transcendent lens of a Black woman.

Dana Davenport

Dana Davenport (1994) is a Korean and Black American interdisciplinary artist shifting between installation, sculpture, video, and performance. Within her practice, she addresses the complexities that surround interminority racism as a foundation for envisioning her own and the collective futurity of Black and Asian peoples. Davenport utilizes synthetic hair as a proxy for her body to discuss the strained relationship between Black and Asian peoples, specifically in America.

Dee Williams

Dee Williams is a queer Jamaican-American photographer and visual artist whose work centers around stories of the African diaspora. Inspired by the rich diversity of unique cultures and communities, Dee seeks to celebrate those stories through fashion and portraiture, while deconstructing and redefining the outside monolithic views, ideas, and representation of Black culture and people.

Deun Ivory

Deun Ivory is a Texas based creative wellness visionary, multidisciplinary artist & photographer whose work centers and celebrates black women. widely known for her ethereal aesthetic & creative ingenuity, ivory curates visual experiences that inspire those who engage with her work to restore and reclaim narratives rooted in self-empowerment, joy & worthiness.

Elise Peterson

Elise R. Peterson is a visual artist and media host living and working in Los Angeles. Her work investigates and connects the nuance of the human experience through a limitless practice in storytelling. She has illustrated two children’s books: How Mamas Love Their Babies, Feminist Press, The Nightlife of Jacuzzi Gasket, Dottir Press

House of Aama

Est. 2015 House of Aama is poised to become the next “great expression” in fashion and design. Manufactured 100% in Los Angeles, California. House of Aama is not just another clothing business. House of Aama is the spiritual expression of mother and daughter design duo, Rebecca Henry and Akua Shabaka in material form.

Liam Woods

Liam Woods is a Trans + Non Binary Image Maker based out of LA. Their work is characterized by the vulnerable, candidly intimate storytelling of Queer people, People of Color and other marginalized communities. In their 5 year experience as a photographer, Liam has partnered with brands and companies such as Apple, Adidas, Facebook, Spotify, Johnson&Johnson and Warby Parker.

Sade Ndya

Sade Ndya is an LA based Cinematographer, who also specializes in Fine Art and Community Organizing. Sade’s creative style is grounded in surreal-like imagery, intricate attention to production design and dynamic lighting dedicated to portraying the beauty in being black.tasy while joining moments of internal and external existence.

Sophia Nahli Allison

Sophia Nahli Allison is an Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, self-portrait photographer, and artist from South Central Los Angeles. A black queer radical dreamer, she reimagines the archives by excavating hidden truths. A meditation of spirit, her work conjures ancestral memories, mysticism, and abstraction to explore the space between reality and dreams.

Stephanie Mei-Ling

Stephanie Mei-Ling is a Black-American/Taiwanese documentary photographer based between Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Through her work she explores such layered issues as the complexity of intersectional identity; elevating the narrative of invisible communities; society’s fetishization of marginalized subcultures; the universality of otherness through a global lens; and the appropriation, re-appropriation and reclaiming of cultural narratives.