Pittsburgh-based filmmaker Emmai Alaquiva has been documenting social-justice movements for years. But like so many, he was particularly devastated by the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd, including some of Floyd’s last words.
“When we heard him call out for his mama — and she was gone for several years, and he still cried out for his mama,” said Alaquiva. “It really, really was gut-wrenching, and as an artist, I wanted to really dig down and think what could I do to try to help change this landscape.”
Last week, Alaquiva’s interactive, multimedia exhibit “OPTICVOICES: Mama’s Boys” opened at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, where he is an artist-in-residency. The result of two years of work, the exhibit features photo portraits of and interviews with 10 Black mothers from around the U.S. who have lost sons to systemic violence, often police shootings. They include Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner; Wanda Cooper-Jones, mother of Ahmaud Arbery; Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; and Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice.
Alaquiva did not want to further “sensationalize,” as he puts it, the killings themselves. Rather, the exhibit asks, “What does healing look like?”
Many of the women responded by starting foundations in their sons’ names to advance social justice. But the answer is still not an easy one.
“It wasn’t like a wound that was gonna heal and was gonna go away, and maybe I was left with a scar,” says Fulton in the eight-minute video that is a centerpiece of the exhibit. “No, this is permanently in my heart, and I had to learn how to adjust.”
Two local women included in the show are Michelle Kenney, the mother of Antwon Rose II, who in 2018 was killed at age 17 by an East Pittsburgh police officer, and Latonya Green, mother of Leon Ford, who was paralyzed from the waist down by police gunfire during a 2012 traffic stop. (Ford is also featured.)
An interactive component of the exhibit allows visitors, through a downloadable app, to pair gallery images of the mothers with photos of their sons. Also on display are personal artifacts of the Black men and boys, including a trophy belonging to Oscar Grant, Michael Brown’s high school diploma, Garner’s basketball jersey, and a poem written by Rose II.
Alaquiva is a veteran filmmaker and the winner of four Emmy awards, the most recent just this year for directing the public-service announcement “Unspeakable,” in which deaf people express their support for Black Lives Matter. “OPTICVOICES” is the name of his initiative, launched in 2016, to document social-justice efforts, whether revolving around Black Lives Matter, the Holocaust, LGBTQ pride, or homelessness.
Alaquiva is part of the Wilson Center’s B.U.I.L.D. artist residency, supported by funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation.
“Mama’s Boys” continues through Jan. 31. More information is here.
