Artist Helina Metaferia Celebrates Black Women Activists in Two Solo Shows

“For me, the pandemic was initially a time for introspection and rest, and then quickly picked up when the 2020 uprisings began,” Ethiopian-American artist Helina Metaferia recalls. Picked up indeed. She and her work, a hybrid of mediums that centers women of color as protagonists and explores how generational traumas inform present-day experiences, have taken major cities by storm. Last summer, two of her large-scale murals emblazoned buildings in Brooklyn and the Bronx. “Generations,” her solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opened in November. This spring, “All Put Together” bows at Praise Shadows Art Gallery nearby; it’s a continuation of Metaferia’s By Way of Revolution series, focusing on the overlooked yet vital role of Black female activism. The exhibit consists of text-based installation, video, live performance, and collage, the latter featuring such portraits as Black Lives Matter’s Megan Castillo and Resistance Revival Chorus’s Zakiyah Ansari with “crowns” made from Black Panther newspaper archives, the women essentially wearing their histories on their heads. “I’m hoping,” adds Metaferia, who’s also an assistant professor in Brown University’s visual art department, “this work can document more than a moment.”