Rx 34 / The First Time
Channell Phillips, The Muse: Christen Harvey, The Colored Girls Museum, 2020. Photo by Zamani Feelings. From “The first time, ever I saw your face,” curated by Mchael Clemmons, Vashti DuBois, Ian Friday, Melina Gooray. On display at Slought through April 30th, 2021.
The first time, ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars
Were the gifts you gave
To the dark, and the endless skies
My Love— Performed by Roberta Flack (1972), lyrics by Ewan MacColl
At The Colored Girls Museum (TCGM), a memoir museum in Germantown, Philadelphia that honors “the stories, experiences, and history of ordinary Colored Girls,” Christen Harvey holds a painting of herself by her mother, artist Channell Phillips. With a girlish visage, a dress that no longer fits, and stuffed cat in hand, Harvey, at ten years old, sits for a portrait at her mother’s request. Commissioned by TCGM as part of the exhibition, The first time, ever I saw your face—a reference to Roberta Flack’s iconic 1972 rendition of the same name—the painting lovingly captures a fleeting moment of Black girlhood. Originally slated for March 2020 but delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this exhibition of portraits of Black girls ages six to twenty-five opened for the first time at Slought in February 2021.
Channell Phillips, The Muse: Christen Harvey, 2020. Photograph provided by The Colored Girls Museum, Philadelphia
As time passes since this portrait was painted, these girls are no longer the girls they were—a bittersweet realization that endures for Phillips as she reflects on her own girlhood and observes her daughter maturing before her eyes.The exhibition at Slought offers an alternate view of young Black girls that society tends to deny—one that pre- serves tenderness and intimacy through a mater- nal lens. Remarking on the portrait of her daugh- ter, Phillips said,“I wanted it to seem like she was from a different time. From a time when young ‘colored girls’ weren’t necessarily seen or really got to experience childhood as she does.” “Black girlhood is not a protected space.”TCGM Executive Director Vashti DuBois explains that this assertion was the impetus for the exhibition: to elevate a particular way of seeing Black girls through the eyes of Black women artists. The first time,ever I saw your face is a love letter to the ordinary colored girl, an exercise of Black women looking at Black girls to elevate their girlhood. “Black girls are not ascribed the humanity that we provide for other people’s children. No matter how young she is, she is evaluated through the lens of adulthood,” DuBois states. She goes on:
Black girlhood is a site of great triumph and sometimes trauma. This portrait project focuses on their intersection in a visual narrative which takes a classic museum artifact,‘the portrait,’ as its primary subject. Black girls, while often looked at, are seldom seen. This project creates space for Black girls in their girlhood to see themselves through the caring and loving gaze of an artist, and for us to see and affirm Black girls as well. So different from a selfie or a photograph, this project offers the portrait of the ordinary Black girl as a monument and invites us to reflect on how being chosen and elevated might be transformative. The series, which we have envisioned as a traveling experience, also emphasizes the importance of Black girls and Black women expanding her boundaries and moving about the world while simultaneously highlighting the tension and danger inherent in her movement.
The first time, ever I saw your face is the first TCGM exhibition designed to travel throughout Philadelphia and beyond. This translational movement seeks to bring awareness to the stories of ordinary and extraordinary Black girls, and to take part in a larger conversation about humanity and empathy. The exhibition asks the viewer, “What are Black girls going through right now? What can we see when we look with love? What happens to us when we look long enough at someone to see them? What happens when we look long enough to see ourselves?”
The Colored Girls Museum: Color Girls.
reflections…
The first time, ever I saw your face models a kind of attentive looking with duration. We can think of this gaze as a form of caregiving and sanctuary. In commissioning the portrait series, DuBois sought to model a community that emerges from the ritualistic practice of painting, which is itself a form of caregiving and healing. The portraits exist side- by-side, echoing and affirming each other’s presence in a mapping of kinship and love. How can we scale and translate this love to traditionally less welcoming spaces, such as the clinical encounter? How is the exhibition an opportunity to fundamentally change our gaze of Black girlhood, in the medical community and beyond?
In her essay “Without Sanctuary,” Michelle Ogunwole, MD, a Black doctor, recalls a traumatic encounter with a Black patient from her first year of residency. After a nurse suspected that the patient was taking unauthorized medication to manage chronic pain, security guards called a team of police officers to search the patient’s room. The patient was subsequently pinned to the ground despite her platelet count being “low enough for her to bleed spontaneously.” As Ogunwole writes, “Even in her hospital room, where Ms. A. came to find healing and relief, she could not escape White supremacy, police violence, or White indifference. Like many Black people in the United States, she had no sanctuary.”
At a time when Black girlhood is in crisis, immer- sive exhibitions such as The first time,ever I saw your face aim to provide sanctuary from the conditions Ogunwole describes. In seeing and honoring the “ordinary colored girl,” the gallery, in some respects, ceases to be a traditional gallery and becomes a structural embodiment of care, offering an alternative model to conventional diversity, equity, and inclusion frameworks. Rather than forcing minority representation upon White spaces, the exhibition forges a space of its own, by and for women of color. DuBois asks,“How can one’s work be sanctuary work?” Likewise, how can we cultivate more space for love and sanctuary in the arts, in healthcare, and in society?
sources
The Colored Girls Museum. thecoloredgirlsmuseum.com/.
“The First Time, Ever I Saw Your Face - Programs.” Slought, slought.org/resources/the_colored_girls_museum.
Herr-Cardillo, Starr, et al. “The Ordinary Extraordinary: Making History Tangible at the Colored Girls Museum.” Hidden City Philadelphia, 18 Feb. 2021, hiddencityphila.org/2021/02/the-ordinary-extraordinary-making-history-tangible-at-the-colored-girls-museum/.
Aaron Levy in conversation with Vashti DuBois, March 8-12, 2021.
Ogunwole SM. Without Sanctuary. N Engl J Med. 2021;384(9):791-793. doi:10.1056/NEJMp2030623.
