Two photography shows running concurrently at 33 Hawley’s Split Level Gallery are about different things, but they have more in common than meets the eye.
The two shows, curated by A.P.E., are “Mutating Origins,” an experimental documentary photography project by Nigerian-born photographer Adeyemi Adebayo, who is currently working on a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and “Listen to My Photographs,” a group show by students at The Care Center in Holyoke, an educational nonprofit that provides high school equivalency classes and other support services to young mothers and women with a low income.
Both shows opened on Wednesday, Jan. 21, and are running through Saturday, Feb. 28.
“Mutating Origins” by Adebayo is a body of work several years in the making. That show, according to a press release, “investigates the migrant identities of first-generation postcolonial African diaspora.” His work documents the “postcolonial African diaspora” by focusing on the physical traces of identity. The show features domestic portraits, cherished artifacts from home and the public gathering spaces where newcomers forge community ties.
The seeds of the project were sown a few years ago, when Adebayo began exploring the notions of borders and movement within Africa. He moved to the United States to start the MFA program in 2023 and decided he wanted to photograph people who had moved from Africa and had lived in the U.S. for at least five years. He wanted to explore the ways in which migration can affect someone’s identity and sense of home.
As he sees it, “Mutating Origins” and “Listen to My Photographs” have a connection.
“I think, for young mothers, there’s this sense of precariousness, where there’s a lot of uncertainty and there’s a lot of learning and it’s a lot of adapting to a new environment, a new reality, and I think that’s the same thing for people that have moved or that are moving or that are experiencing that migration: you knew something before, and then you’ve been thrown into this new reality that you have to adjust to, and that also really changes your identity,” he said. “I think motherhood also does profoundly change your ways of seeing and your ways of understanding life, so I think there is that throughline between the two works, where there’s that precarity and there’s that adjustment.”
“Listen to My Photographs” is the result of photography workshops that instructors Ani Rivera, Mari Champagne and Madeline Keating held with young mothers at The Care Center’s high school equivalency program last summer. Their work was first shown at AIRSpace Gallery in Amherst last August.
“At The Care Center, art is not an elective. It’s integrated into all of the work that we do,” said Oona Cook, executive director of The Care Center. “It’s part of the transformative process for our students.”
Keating said that photography is valuable as an art form for young moms. “Most people who have kids take pictures of their kids all the time, but they might not really see it as a valuable piece of art,” said Keating. “I think that a lot of what we wanted to do was try and reveal the truth that, no, art is everywhere; it’s everywhere in your life. You just might not realize it yet.”
As Champagne explains, the camera can be a powerful platform to reclaim a narrative. “I’m not a mom, but, in life, we all struggle,” Champagne said. “I have had struggle inside of my life, and I feel like even moms who have everything set up for themselves perfectly struggle, and I feel like photography gives them a platform to be able to share whatever narratives they want to about themselves and their lives without needing to broadcast it vocally or have to really construct it in a super formal way.”
Nayelis Aviles, a student of The Care Center and single mother to a 5-year-old girl, describes the community at the Holyoke nonprofit as a “second family.” Through the photography workshops, she not only learned skills like modeling, editing and being patient, but she also had a bigger takeaway: “I’m an artist. I have a gift that nobody could take.” Now that she’s learned photography skills, had her work on display and gotten a new camera, Aviles said she wants to start a photography business of her own.
Cook said she’s enjoyed watching the shift in identity after Nayelis has gained these new skills and learned more about herself.
“We knew that she was a really talented artist,” Cook said. “We knew it from her stained glass, from her glassblowing and now she knows this about herself, and it’s a beautiful thing to see that transformation.”
33 Hawley, which houses the Split Level Gallery, is open from noon to 7 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. For more information about Adeyemi Adebayo, visit paakanni.com. For more information about The Care Center, visit carecenterholyoke.org.