A Freedom That Regenerates

Photo Credit: Rob Randolph

Mia Rimmer

Countless stories constitute the fabric of Black life in our city. Plucking out a single thread spools forth generations of joy, pain, resistance, migration. How do we take our place in these cycles without being swallowed? The day before Uptown Metamorphosis opened, the artist and I reflected on the following affirmation from Midwestern giant Gwendolyn Brooks: Your act is the consolidation. Samuel Allen recognizes the gravity of this exhibition as his consolidation, far beyond its accomplishment as the first solo show of his career. He’s spent the past several years entrenched in familial history; hands touching centuries of experiences guided questions of transformation. The harvest of this deep inquiry, Uptown Metamorphosis insists that to walk in truth is to first wade through memory. 

The exhibition activates THE CR8TV HOUSE’s architecture to not only steep the audience in the magnitude of a lineage, but also maximize itself as the invitation in. The entirety of the first floor reactivates its role as Home to steward the story of a family. The audience is greeted upon arrival by the ultimate welcome home: flowers in the kitchen. Dried petals bloom from the ceiling and string together nostalgic snapshots, facilitating a first introduction to the artist as someone’s baby. Camcorder loops and large scale portraits quietly denote phases of life on the path towards the primary gallery space. 

The works at the core of the show appear as triangulations: written reflections poetically marry archival photos to Sam’s own image making. Each conversation rests in a pocket of domesticity and self-determination that speak to the artist’s origins and echo across Black histories. ‘Baldwin Theory’ addresses the world’s weight on Black love and its ripples of misogynoir. The sanctity of our youngest is affirmed in ‘Baby, Baby, Baby Steppers’. Sam’s photography appears as the largest piece in each grouping, literally taking on the act of consolidation. His subjects wield bold gaze and intentional touch to convey familiar themes with renewed dignity. Through the confident fluidity of each form, the contemporality of his work thus offers new horizons on which to unfurl ancestral lessons. 

The expansion made possible by the artist’s gathering work develops a new vernacular of witness for this history and its makers. Sam lauds the existing role of the camera in the family across the exhibition space. Portraits spanning generations kiss cabinets, windows panes, and piano tops. The audience is privy to home videos that document grief-worn peace and self-shoots of chosen sisterhood. The celebration of artistry stretches beyond Sam as an individual to dutifully uplift every memory keeper before him. Each image layered together envelopes union, friendship, obligation. The lens of a calling and redirection that unfolds freedom like a blanket. Warm like I’m carrying you still. 

The exhibition’s dialogue is not facilitated by its artworks alone; Sam embraces the ever-changing sensory experience of the exhibition environment to continuously generate new experiences for the viewer, including himself. My first viewing of the show attests to this fact. The house greeted me with hot July air, thick to press upon my anticipation. The exhale of the 35 bus soundtracked my tears as I absorbed the collage covering a gallery front window. A soft moment of reverence to be soaked in light that first traveled through generations of wide-eyed babies and school-aged poses. Stillness soon burst into play as I rolled cartwheels and skated circles through the gallery with Sam’s nephew. Palms and plastic wheels pressing the curiosity of boyhood into wooden floors. The gallery’s origins as living room pulsed around us while we gazed sideways-upside-down-sideways at the artwork. The giddy dizziness solidified to a deeper hope as I thought of a child rendered mute by loss, now developing a visual language that incubates the joyful expression of his family’s next generation. 

Through an evolution of sensation and connectivity, Uptown Metamorphosis champions time as neither linear nor singular. This positioning unveils a two-way street between ourselves and our histories as the ultimate life source. Demonstrated by the artist himself, it is the empowerment of ancestry that allows one to alchemize its lessons. Sam offers this inaugural gift to THE CR8TV HOUSE as an ode across bloodline and time to the roots propelling us forward. It is fertile grounds for the next transformation. It is gratitude.