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What is called the imagination (from image, magi, magic, magician, etc.) is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data, and can be called on to solve all our “problems.” The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as “things.” Imagination (image) is all possibility, because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use (idea) is possible. And so begins that image’s use in the world. Possibility is what moves us.
—Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre”, Liberator, July 1965
Scheherazade Tillet
Scheherazade Tillet is a Trinidadian and African American photographer, art therapist, and social justice organizer. Her work has been featured in Gagosian Journal, Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, The Chicago Tribune, and MSNBC. In 2003, she co-founded A Long Walk Home (ALWH), a Chicago-based national nonprofit, that uses art to empower young people to end violence against girls and women. She is also the Artistic Director of the award-winning multimedia performance, “Story of a Rape Survivor (SOARS)” and the creator of the Girl/Friends Leadership Institute, a yearlong artist-activist program for girls and young women of color. Currently, Scheherazade is 3Arts artist working on photography project a “Prom Send Off: The Rites of Passage for Chicago’s Girls. In 2018 – 2020, Tillet is the inaugural artist in residence for the joint initiative between Shine Portrait Studio and New Arts Justice and is developing her first solo show, “The Visibility Project” and co-curating “Picturing Black Girlhood,” to be exhibited in Newark in Spring 2021.
A Long Walk Home/ Artist in ResidencyArtist In Residence, New Arts Justice and Shine Portrait Studio