Marlon F. Hall
Curator of Black artists and art workers
Marlon F. Hall is an artist whose work is rooted in social practice and has grown from anthropological listening. His life intention is to cultivate human potential while unearthing beauty from perceived community brokenness. As an art-making storyteller, he was recently named a Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. Department of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is a 2021 Tulsa Artist Fellow, was the Visual Anthropologist and Social Media Archivist for the Greenwood Art Project, a CBS Gayle King Morning Show subject matter expert, and a producing storyteller for the Emmy Award-winning Migrant Kitchen. His digital photos and film curation are featured in Google Arts and Culture, with a special spotlight on his exhibition linked to the coveted Google search bar. His latest project features one of his carefully curated Amnesia Therapy Salon Dinners in partnership with The British Council and The Kenya Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennial.
Marlon engages in socially engaged art installations, photography, filmmaking, and carefully curated salon dinner gatherings as a community well and wheel of healing. Ethnographic listening is a well from which folks inwardly draw inspiration, and art is a wheel that moves them forward. Sometimes, the social, political, or physical violence some communities experience creates a trauma that results in cultural amnesia. This amnesia can make it hard for these communities to remember who they are, what they can contribute, and why those contributions are essential.
Today, his work is rooted in Tulsa, where he is tilling the soil with local creatives and community advocates to nourish the harvest of human possibility growing from the ashes of the 1921 Race Massacre. Marlon is the Community Engagement Cultivator for the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Because memory informs imagination, this is an effort to remember who they were as Black Wall Street and imagine who they can become. He believes Tulsa is not a graveyard but a garden. Gardens also decompose elements of life in them, but they move towards the destined growth cycle of life, death, and renewal. The growth he works to reveal in Tulsa harvests the resilient fruit of the human spirit that is the fire-proof and impenetrable legacy of Black Wall Street.
Welana Fields Queton
Curator of Native artists and art workers
Shelby Head
Curator of white artists and art workers
Shelby Head (pronouns fluid) is widely recognized for their ability to incorporate social content into their accomplished work. With a constant need to experiment and explore different materials, Head continues to push the boundaries of their visual vocabulary and extend the scope of their creative expression. Head has worked in public art and exhibited widely in galleries, alternative spaces, and art fairs. They have received numerous professional awards, residencies, and fellowships, including the Tulsa Artist Fellowship Integrated Arts Award, 2022-23; Tulsa Artist Fellowship, 2020-22; THRIVE Powerhouse Grant in partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2022, and OVAC Grants, 2020-22. Head was awarded the Connecticut Artist Fellowship Grant, 2019; the SLV Social Practice Residency in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, 2019; The Artist's Resource Trust Grant, 2017; Vermont Studio Center Residency, 2019; and Jentel Residency, 2018. Exhibitions include Dirt Palace Storefront Window Gallery, Providence, RI, 2024; Living Arts of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, 2023; Melton Gallery, Oklahoma Central University, Edmond, OK, 2022; Window Front Installation, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Tulsa, OK, 2021; El Pueblo History Museum, Pueblo, CO, 2020; Cloyde Snook Gallery, Alamosa, CO, 2020. Head lives and creates in Providence, RI.