TACUMBA
First-time Exposure awardee: $5,000
This grant supports TACUMBA’s “The Future Is Black” through which he creates high-quality, meaningful experiences and content with and for local artists and creatives.
TACUMBA is a Pittsburgh native and a self-taught photographer, curator, creative director and founder of “The Future Is Black,” started in 2019. His goal is to steward a community and ecosystem around forward-thinking BIPOC artists. This passion comes from more than eight years of grassroots community work around urban agriculture and a pivotal experience with the "Transformative Arts Program" in 2016. He received a grant to be a teaching artist in Hazelwood, leading the Hazelwood Youth Media Justice Program. There, he taught photography and visual storytelling to high school-aged youth from the Hazelwood neighborhood. He says the experience made him realize how art could help transform perspectives about day-to-day life and/or systemic issues.
TACUMBA was inspired to create experiences such as art exhibitions to provide space, a platform and an audience to amplify local BPIOC artists. He says “The Future is Black” is informed by radical reimagination, which means creating purposeful, accessible and positive spaces and times for imagine together, debating and refining shared visions of the past, present and future.
WEB: https://www.blkfutures.org/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/the.futureisblk/