Pratt Students Respond to W.E.B. Du Bois

Across the ages, artists and thinkers have learned from each other, built on existing ideas, and shared inspiration in order to make and re-make the world into something familiar, yet new. From the classroom to the studio, and all across the city and world, Pratt students are new links in a long chain of artist inspiration. The timeless connections between artists shine brightly in a recent exhibition, In This Moment: Pratt Students + W.E.B. Du Bois, on view at The Rubelle & Norman Schafler Gallery on Pratt’s Brooklyn campus through March 14, curated by Gallery Coordinator Grace Abbott.

Undergraduate and graduate students from programs across the Institute were invited by the Exhibitions Department to submit artworks that engage with the vast legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois. The result from the Open Call represents “the next step in a lineage of exhibitions featuring artists reckoning with the legacy of one of the most profound and influential African American intellectuals of the 20th century.” 

“We didn’t know what kind of work to expect from the Open Call, and we certainly didn’t expect such a range from the medium to the artist’s major. Once we had all the work in front of us it was easy to see which pieces were able to be in dialogue together and that process led the curatorial decisions,” said Abbott. “The works themselves are already rich in narrative and expression, so I wanted to avoid overlapping more narrative and let the works converse amongst themselves.”

Extending the Legacy

The In This Moment student exhibition echoes and responds to an exhibition at Pratt Manhattan Gallery on 14th Street this past fall, titled In Our Time: Eleven Artists + W.E.B. Du Bois. Curated by curator, educator, and former Pratt Institute Director of Exhibitions Loretta Yarlow, In Our Time presented works from leading contemporary artists that responded to Du Bois and explored his lasting influence on their art. From there, Pratt students picked up the baton for In This Moment, by creating artworks in conversation with Du Bois as well as the artists who had exhibited at Pratt Manhattan. 

At the opening for In This Moment, the gallery bustled with visitors. Over 37 works are displayed, ranging from installation and multimedia, to oil paint, photography, sculpture, film, artist books, and more. The student work draws on themes of ecological memory, double consciousness, and personal and collective identities, inspired by prominent Du Boisian concepts, and connects those themes to their present lives and concerns. 

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors are first met with a black-and-white photograph of a Tallahassee river titled “Guiding Light,” by Lewis James, BFA Photography ’26. James’s image echoes LaToya Ruby Frazier’s river series included in In Our Time. 

“After looking at LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work, it made me think of how environments can serve as physical representations, but also emotional and spiritual,” explained James. “Guiding Light” asks viewers to see the transforming environment as “a reminder of change “ as well as a “watching spirit.”

Grant Kelly, MPS Arts and Cultural Management ’27, was also inspired by his environment for the photograph “Roots 1.” The project, he says, “began as an act of land stewardship, a way to reconnect with home. It has since become a routine observation of nature’s resilience to our neglect and the permanence we leave in the natural world.”  Kelly was inspired by Du Bois’s novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece, in which, Kelly says, “the wild swamp is a living archive and is an overlooked and untended place much like the riverbed I grew up visiting in New Jersey.”

Exploring “Double Consciousness”

Many of the artists connected to Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness,” introduced in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), which describes the fragmented experience of living as an African American in a segregated and racist society. 

For example, an artfully designed and printed book on view by Mary Lam, BFA Communications Design ’27, explores “double consciousness” through her own relationship with the history and culture of nail salons. As a Vietnamese student, she tracks her personal experiences and changing perception of the industry and artistry of nails, documenting her “journey from outside to insider, from shame to pride, from dismissal to recognition.” Looking forward, she says, “what happens next depends on whether we can tell more complete stories, ones that acknowledge both exploitation and artistry, tradition and innovation, struggle and achievement.”

Skye Little Cloud, BFA Fine Arts (Painting) ’28, likewise related the idea of double consciousness to what she describes as “an analogous phenomenon in the Urban Native identity.” A diptych of richly-hued figurative paintings, “Serpentine Bloom & Introspective Bloom (Diptych)” acts as a “visual representation of my double consciousness living in a contemporary world while holding onto my traditional knowledge.”

Artists in the show include: Amira Chowyuk, Skye Little Cloud, Nia Crutcher, Amira Dughri, Xinran Fan & Chaoran Wang, Louis Fontenot, Chuyoun Hughes, Lewis James, Sarah Jang, Zhengzhu Jin, Grant Kelly, Jiyoon Koo, Mary Lam, Keongbok Lee, Asriel Lehman, Brigette McKnight-Sur, Gabriela Mestriner, Sajjad Musa, Ariana Oh, Vicky De Leon Palacios, Vasishth Rajcoomar, Samson Shofoluwe, Navya Shroff, Montaysia Yuneek Sims, Redmond Stehlik, Danny Sudberry, Alex Wang, Weiman Wang, Kyra Wolfenbarger, and Haidong Yang.

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