Across the United States, and indeed the world, Black communities are continually disrupted by gentrification, over-policing, and environmental racism, among other conditions. Artist Olalekan Jeyifous takes as his subject his neighborhood of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York, imagining new possibilities in the face of these existing realities that displace and harm people.
Inspired by speculative fiction, a narrative genre that explores the question, “What if?” through imagined elements, Jeyifous asks, “What if Black communities were given the space and resources needed to thrive?”
The Frozen Neighborhoods explores this question through digital collage, animation, and sculptures that combine Jeyifous’s architectural training with his artistic practice: “I take photographs with my iPhone, email myself these images, and then I place them into a 3D software like Sketch Up. I use them as an underlayer to design the architecture, the technology, the gadgetry, everything that you see in the scene…. Over hours and hours, I build up a full scene around this photo without any kind of sketching or drawing.”
The artist’s creative vision is guided by a story of his own making. In his alternative reality, the climate crisis has reached a boiling point, and with restrictions on mobility, Crown Heights has become a “Frozen Zone” cut off from the rest of the city. Through this isolation, the community gains an autonomy that allows it to develop robust systems, technologies, and sustainable practices. Able to shape their own futures, the neighborhood’s citizens establish networks of mutual aid and open access to education, healthy food, and green spaces.
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