In a Baltimore Exhibition, the Transformative Potential of Today’s Griots Emerges

Stories have long helped us to understand the world and our place within it. For the western Sahel in West Africa, storytellers known as griots are often responsible for sharing oral histories and local legends. As generations pass and culture shifts, griots add onto the narratives they’ve inherited with contemporary details relevant to their audiences.

A group exhibition curated by Noel Bedolla and Ky Vassor at Galerie Myrtis gathers a dozen international artists continuing this tradition. Emergence: Stories in the Making presents “a mirror to contemporary society” by positing that the narratives we tell play a critical role in collective experiences, acts of solidarity, and ultimately, societal progress.

a portrait of a teenage boy with a backpack and tie — Kachelle Knowles, “Queen’s College” (2025), graphite, decorative paper, colored pencils, thread, charcoal, acrylic paint, ink, acrylic gemstones, marker on paper, 28 x 18 inches. Image courtesy of the artist, Galerie Myrtis, and Tern Gallery

For Alanis Forde, imagining paradise and its trappings is a way to excavate questions about internal conflict. She often paints figures with blue masks and bodies, the vibrant disguises becoming proxies that allow the artist to merge her likeness with a fictive version of herself. Subverting the art historical and cultural representations of Black women “as objects of pleasure and servitude,” Forde shapes an alternative narrative.

Kachelle Knowles works in a parallel practice. Through mixed-media portraits with patterned paper, thread, and acrylic gems, the Bahamian artist focuses on Black teenagers and asserts their rights to fluid gender expressions.

While portraits feature prominently in Emergence, Kim Rice’s “American Quilt” invokes the politics of the body without visualizing a figure. Her large-scale tapestry is comprised of maps distributed by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the defunct federal agency responsible for delineating which neighborhoods were too “hazardous” to receive mortgages in a racist process known as redlining. Stitched together with red thread, “American Quilt” makes explicit the ways that “whiteness is woven into our everyday lives,” Rice says.

If you’re in Baltimore, see Emergence: Stories in the Making through July 12.

a portrait of a woman with her knee on a small couch wearing a blue mask — Alanis Forde, “Garden Gloves” (2024), oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches

a tapestry in front of a window — Kim Rice, “American Quilt” (2025), HOLC “redlining” maps, acrylic gel, thread, 10 x 11 feet. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering

a detail image of a tapestry of maps — Kim Rice, “American Quilt” (2025), HOLC “redlining” maps, acrylic gel, thread, 10 x 11 feet. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering

a portrait of a man seated with a gun and hunting dog next to him — Unyime Edet, “Spirit To Spirit: The Night Watchers” (2024), oil on canvas, 55 x 59 inches

a portrait of a Black woman with flowers in front — Damilare Jaimu, “All Things Bloom” (2025), oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

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