A collaborative exhibition of research-based artworks by artists Regina Agu, Lisa E. Harris, journey, Michael Khalil Taylor, Rebecca Novak, and Ifeanyi Okoro; the exhibition was curated collaboratively between the artists, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Ashley Hunt.
Communograph
Communograph House, installation at Project Row Houses, 2011
“Communograph” is a multi-platform art project, conceived and initiated by Ashley Hunt and organized in collaboration with artists and residents of Houston’s Third Ward community, Project Row Houses, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, and students and faculty of the University of Houston’s School of Art Design Program.
Hunt was originally invited to make a map of the Third Ward neighborhood in which Project Row Houses sits, and through initial conversations with community members and questions about what it means to make a map today, the project expanded into a framework for community-based research, featuring five parallel activities: an exhibition, two public conversation series, a walking tour and architecture tour, and the building of a temporary welcome center for Project Row Houses. The title, Communograph, was developed to combine community with writing, as photograph combines light (photo-) with writing (-graph), grounding this research in a writing of community from the perspective of the community itself. In this way, each of the five research activities served as a platform for community members to enter into conversation, share their thinking, their knowledge, their authorship and their interpretations.
The goal was to build local questions, knowledge, audience and critique, which would then inform the map for Project Row Houses. The larger form of Communograph was conceived as one that could be repeated in multiple sites and communities, like a rubber stamp could repeat but, with each repetition, be a little different.
5 PLATFORMS FOR COMMUNITY RESEARCH
Communograph included five different platforms: an art exhibition in the “Communograph House”; Sidewalk Talks, organized by participating artists and a local speaker of their choice; a Public Program Series of artist talks and neighborhood tours; and community mapping projects resulting in a “welcome center,” designed by students of the Graphic Design Program at the University of Houston.
THE COMMUNOGRAPH HOUSE
The first iteration of the project was the Communograph House, the exhibition that featured research-based works from each of the Communograph artists — Regina Agu, Lisa E. Harris, journey, Michael Khalil Taylor, Rebecca Novak, and Ifeanyi Okoro; the exhibition was curated collaboratively between the artists, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Ashley Hunt.
SIDEWALK TALKS AND PUBLIC PROGRAM SERIES
In collaboration with Bree Edwards of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center, Ashley Clemmer of Project Row Houses, and the artists, a set of public programs were coordinated to coincide with the Communograph House exhibition. This featured Sidewalk Talks, each organized by one of the featured artists to be in dialogue with a community elder, intellectual, artist, healer, historian, etc who they’d like to be in dialogue with, held on sidewalks and other accessible community spaces; as well as a Public Program Series, that included artist talks by Mel Chin, Merle Laderman-Ukeles, Rick Lowe and Ashley Hunt, held at the historic Eldorado Ballroom and the University of Houston.
THE COMMUNITY MAPPING AND WELCOME CENTER COLLABORATION
WITH STUDENTS OF THE GRAPHIC DESIGN PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
