San Diego City College students, staff and community members joined each other for the Afroture event in the campus’s V building on Feb. 24.

Afroture is an immersive event that seeks to open the aperture of lens-based art to amplify Afro-Diasporan perspectives, according to the Afroture website. 

The all-day event featured hands-on, in-studio workshops, a documentary screening and discussions emphasizing inequity in the art world faced by black creatives.

The unveiling of the “ I See You: Beauty Through The Black Lens” exhibition was also included. 

“(The) exhibition takes you on a journey to find family, a journey to find home, ” said Denali Jöel, creative director of Afroture in their unveiling speech.

Jöel said their vision for the event was to create a space for a “radical and different way to make an art exhibition.”

For featured artist Nashelle Brown, this meant taking a chance and going beyond the frame of the photograph for her first exhibition of her career.

“I took the chance,” Brown said. “I usually never actually take the chance on things like this. (But) I was stoked about it. It’s pretty exciting.” 

Jöel was joined by Angie Chandler, Dinah Poellnitz and Robin North as community dialogue hosts.

Together, they led the discussion with the topic of decolonization of photography and what it means in a broader context. 

To Jöel, this meant challenging institutions built without regard to black artists.

“The idea of Vogue (magazine) was never set with me in mind,” Jöel said. “Why should I set that as a mark of success?” 

How to creatively become part of black liberation and anti-racist movement, and what this means for both black creatives and allies, became a major topic at hand. 

“Building an institution that caters to my personal needs, experimental and creative, as a black woman, (is necessary),” said Poellnitz, a developer of local community art exhibitions and programs.