Gallery Opening: If Belonging Is a Fiction

If Belonging is a Fiction

Curated by Dylan Joyner

Featuring Artists:

Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin

Tariq Nasir Grissom

Cara Elise Taylor

Kaylnn Youngblood

Village Well & Books is honored to present If Belonging Is A Fiction, a group exhibition featuring four Los Angeles-based photographers as they explore the city of Los Angeles through Black history and contemporaneity. Join us on Saturday, January 10th from 3-5pm for our opening reception.

Fiction of belonging is a literary genre that explores the search for home, whilst living as the “other.” In it, characters often traverse themes of identity, community and connection through the lens of an immigrant experience. In doing so, the genre grapples with the idea of arrival and how one comes to foster a sense of sanctuary through place, community, food, ritual and leisure.

In If Belonging is a Fiction, four photographers provide documentation as proof of life and survival, showcasing the ways in which Black people have carved out space for themselves in the city of Los Angeles. Here, they investigate the idea of home, begging the question: if belonging truly is a fiction, what narratives do we craft as we commune and build home for ourselves?

In this exhibition, each artist looks to capture Blackness as it adapts and migrates along the veins of the city. Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin and Tariq Nasir Grissom’s works explore Los Angeles’ long history of Black displacement. Grissom melts the past with the present through collage. By layering contemporary images of the Pacific Ocean with archival family portraits, he evokes a sense of fading memory and calls attention to a deep and intrinsic connection between Black life (and death) and the sea. Whereas Grissom’s work has an ethereal quality, Boyd-Bouldin’s is heavy with the physicality of place. Deeply observational, Boyd-Bouldin captures a Los Angeles in limbo–teetering between long-standing and under-resourced neighborhoods planted in history and the uprooting of these same neighborhoods for outsourced profit.

Other artists, Cara Elise Taylor and Kaylnn Youngblood, reckon with belonging through creation, celebration and ritual. Taylor turns her attention to the Black immigrant experience to spotlight a small Guyanese kitchen here in Los Angeles. There is a heightened sense of mutual care exchanged through her images. Her lens acts as a mirror, refracting double awareness. Clear is the care and intention the chefs put into the food being created, but also equally clear is the artist’s desire to capture this ritual and its participants with tenderness. For Youngblood, the freedom to express pure joy is elevated. In her images, all photographed in Leimert Park, a historically Black neighborhood, the subjects convey lightness. Although contemporary, each photograph appears grainy and outdated, implying an untethered and non-temporal experience of silliness, freedom and autonomy.

Together these four artists draw emphasis to the ways in which one creates and discovers their community, in spite of displacement.

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Tariq Nasir Grissom

Prior to the 1950s, Santa Monica was home to a thriving and sizable black community within the Belmar neighborhood and on Broadway between 14th and 20th street. Through eminent domain more than 500 families were displaced to build the Santa Monica Civic Center and I-10 freeway. In Held Within My Own Arms, Nasir Grissom re-establishes the black community archive within the Santa Monica coastline. Like a beacon, Grissom’s photograph pulls you in and haunts. The circular form investigates the ability for the image to be a navigational object and evokes Tina Campt’s idea of “Haptic photos.” By layering archival images of community members in their everyday surroundings over the Pacific Ocean, this piece hones in on the permeable barrier between life, death, and memory along U.S. waterways. In its title, the work calls the viewer to a place of care and responds to a history of environmental weathering.

Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin

For the past year or so, Boyd-Bouldin has been photographing the stretch of Jefferson Blvd. between Main and Normandie. The work is an extension of his broader documentary landscape practice (Archival Recordings), which is focused on gentrification's impact on the topography of Los Angeles. His approach is centered around capturing the ephemeral scenes and structures that make up a neighborhood to create a record of what's lost. Boyd-Bouldin’s collage work incorporates the photographs taken over time into an abstract composition that reinterprets the areas he photographs.

Cara Elise Taylor

The themes present in Cara Elise Taylor’s works include nostalgia, memory, community, and Caribbean life. According to Taylor, living in LA has meant being able to witness deep rituals from an amazing range of cultures. She believes that art exists in so much of Black life. It’s in the curve of a Caribbean woman's wrist as she seasons a pot of stewed meat. In this series, she tells stories with an intentional focus on lineage, craft, and care.

Ka’Lynn Youngblood

Ka’Lynn is an artist, director, and photographer rooted in South Central, LA. With a commitment to representing Black lives authentically, she captures the nuance, strength, and vibrancy of African American experiences. Her work aims to illuminate the depth of these stories, fostering a legacy that uplifts and inspires future generations. Through her creative vision, she challenges stereotypes and celebrates the richness of her community. Beyond her creative work, she is deeply embedded in her community as a leader and activist. Based in Leimert Park — a historic center of Black arts and culture in Los Angeles — she serves as a community art leader, working to cultivate spaces where creativity, self-expression, and collective empowerment thrive. Through workshops, collaborative projects, and mentorship, she strives to inspire and support emerging artists, ensuring that the next generation has the tools and confidence to share their own stories.

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