Episode 06: Artist Victor Davson; Decolonizing Art Spaces in Newark, NJ
Even after 35 years of knowing him, I continue to be inspired by Victor’s public and personal art practice in Newark, NJ. Victor is the co-founder of Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark. He and Carl E. Hazelwood founded Aljira together in 1983 as a non-profit center for contemporary visual art to promote the work of emerging and under-represented artists.
Aljira was a vital hub for creative excellence in Newark’s downtown arts district for over three decades. Victor served as its director for 33 years. Victor’s professional and charismatic leadership has, and continues to have, a profound impact on the artistic landscape of Newark and the Tri-State region. Artists of the African Diaspora, women and other underrepresented artists are exhibited, engaged and given global platforms that had never been realized, before he landed in the city of Newark.
Victor’s visual art practice is heavily influenced by the anti-colonial politics of the Caribbean, and by the intellectual powerhouses of that period. These include extraordinary writers and activists like Martin Carter, Frantz Fanon and Walter Rodney. Since 1996, Victor’s series of paintings and drawings are his attempt as an artist to negotiate the roots of identity in a terrain of loss and desire. He believes people of the African Diaspora have survived because of their extraordinary resiliency.
Victor recently retired as Co-Director of Express Newark, an initiative of Rutgers University in Newark and community partners focusing on arts, entrepreneurship and social justice.
Victor received a BFA degree from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited widely throughout the northeast United States and has been included in exhibitions in England, France, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. His work is in the permanent collections of The National Museum of Fine Arts: Havana, Cuba, the National Collection of Fine Arts, Guyana, the Newark Museum of Art, The Montclair Art Museum and the New Jersey State Museum.
Check out the images in this episode on: What’s Newark To Do With It?
In 2015 for Black History Month, Gallery 1978 presented “Dub Factor Redux” by Victor Davson. The individual works combine to create a large installation that represent a facet of the American music cultural phenomenon, depicting popular and iconic figures which were an influence on him growing up in Georgetown, Guyana.
Artist and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art co-founder, Carl E. Hazlewood.
HERESIES magazine cover, 18 & 19, 1985, Vol. 5, No. 2. The Heresies Collective was founded in 1976 by a group of feminist artists, including Black artist Emma Amos (right), with the goal of increasing discourse around the ideas of feminism, politics, and their relationship to art. Artists from this collective exhibited at Aljira at an earlier location in North Newark on 5th street and Orange.
A film still from Esther Podemski and Chuck Schultz's 5 DAYS IN JULY. Originally shown in 2007, it was a dual-screen short film, originally conceived as an installation. This work uses film footage from television, government, and private archives, to convey the essential facts of Newark's 1967 Rebellion and explore the roots and legacy of racial tension in America. The film was originally exhibited on the 40th anniversary of the Newark Rebellion at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art and was commissioned by the gallery's founding director Victor Davson. Davson recently retired as the co-director of Express Newark. https://5daysinjulyinstallation.com/index.php
Amiri Baraka, 2013, iconic Native Newarker, New Jersey Poet Laureate Family Reading at Aljira.
Friday, May 22, 2015: Okwui Enwezor and Dawoud Bey receive Aljira Timehri Leadership in the Arts Award. Left: Dawoud Bey (lapel flower). Aljira guests during the reception.
Victor Davson, Dub Factor: Heroes (Marvin), 2016. Acrylic and sequins on treated vinyl LP record album cover.
Victor Davson and Ann Schaper Englot, Co-Directors of Express Newark in 2017.
Victor Davson, Misogyny Papers/Apology (impossible), 2020, acrylic, and magazine clipping on hardboard panel.
The Book of Hours/Ours book project, 2021, featuring the work of Cicely Cottingham and Victor Davson, emerged as a result of curator Cynthia Hawkins’ invitation to have concurrent exhibitions at the Bertha V.B. Lederer Gallery at SUNY Geneso.