Student’s work celebrates the Black woman’s experience
OTTAWA — When Tinu Akinwande began shooting self-portraits for an Instagram project, she thought she was doing so to celebrate Blackness in society and mark Black History Month.
But she now sees her project, called “Black Women … Blossom,” as celebrating resilience at a time when the whole world is in a state of uncertainty. She’s had thousands of likes from people in Ottawa, Toronto and elsewhere.
Akinwande, a 21-year-old African studies and political science student at Carleton University, is the founder of Black Brilliance, an annual Ontario-wide conference that discusses the trials and triumphs that Black students face within the education system.
Her world, like everyone’s, changed when the pandemic hit. Even worse, in June 2020 a close friend, Abel Mengistab, died at age 20 in an Ottawa bus crash. Originally, they had planned to take photos together using different models across the city. COVID-19 lockdown restrictions left Akinwande with only herself as a subject to shoot.
She was struggling mentally. “When Abel died, I was the person who people came to. I got busy with school and work, and it didn’t really give me much time to sit back and think. I didn’t notice I was subconsciously going through a mental health battle of my own. While people were looking at me to console them, I didn’t prioritize myself,” Akinwande recalls. Months after his death, she became depressed.
“I feel like a lot of people have been down and forced to look at themselves through this pandemic. It made me think, do I like myself, do I love myself?” Akinwande says, “I thought … I have a camera and I can edit a bit, let me see if I can create a story of my triumphs and trials and see if I could help people.”
One morning in January, she set up her tripod by the window of her bedroom, and spent the day creating the photos that make up the series. She then shared the photos and accompanying poetry by herself and others on social media during February, Black History Month.
The project, she says, honours Mengistab by celebrating Blackness and the experiences of Black women. “This is not only a celebration of me but those who came before, and continue to come after,” she says. “The project is something that I thought of a year ago with him, and even though he’s not here I was inspired to continue.”
The series of self-portraits both commemorates and mimics work from Black artists. For example, one of Akinwande’s photos is inspired by an album cover by American singer-songwriter Erykah Badu in which Badu is depicted with all of her interests and traits coming out of her afro.
“There’s a universe in her afro. There are so many intricacies and lenses to see her through,” Akinwande says.
“Abel would have been very happy about this. He used to rock a big afro. We used to have conversations and joke about who could grow the biggest afro. We were supposed to take a photo like this together,” Akinwande says.
Another example is a shot of her taken to resemble Maya Angelou, American poet, memoirist and civil rights activist.
Founder and creator of the Niche Ottawa Art Gallery, Morgan Hamilton-Kirk, says Akinwande’s work is a “spectacular portrayal of the Black woman’s experience. You get a glimpse into her thoughts but she also leaves a lot of room for people to interpret and place their own stories in her photography.”
“She starts her project off with this picture of a blooming flower and this very powerful picture of herself just blooming. She ends the series in bright yellow, like a soaring sunflower, really contrasting with the rest of the piece that starts with darker brown tones.”
“In her portraiture, all of her thoughts, angles and how she depicts the theme is always in a position of power. In all the shots that she has done, there’s this strong theme of having pride and being unapologetic while holding space in this single room she’s shooting in,” Hamilton-Kirk says.