On the Boards Archives | South Seattle Emerald

by Amanda Ong

From March 23 to March 26, On the Boards will present the UN-[TITLED] Project, a multi-site project at Wa Na Wari and Inscape Arts to immersively engage with gentrification, displacement, community meaning, cultural memory, and healing in the Central District and the Chinatown-International District (CID). The project was conceived, created, and curated by Berette S Macaulay, with the partnership of the Black Heritage Society of Washington State, Vanishing Seattle, The Sankofa Theater, and Arte Noir. Although her background includes places as diverse as her birthplace of Sierra Leone, the U.K., Jamaica, and Manhattan, Macaulay knew she wanted to create a piece deeply rooted in local Seattle stories.

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by Chamidae Ford

Art is often thought of as the expression of oneself. A place where you transfer your emotions into music, paintings, or written words. But for Sadiqua Iman, an artist of many outlets, art represents a place for healing.

Native to Chattanooga, Tennessee, Iman says Seattle offered opportunities for artistic expression that she couldn’t find elsewhere.

“When I got here, I fell in love with the opportunities,” Iman said. “I’ve traveled around a lot just for my career and for life and have found — to be able to penetrate and get grants and do original work which is one of the things that I love doing, more original work in devised pieces, you pretty much had to either sleep with everybody, be related to everybody, or pay everybody in order to even get your foot in the door. When I came to Seattle, I had tons of ideas and when I put them out there, they were accepted, they were funded, they were supported, and it was like, ‘Oh shoot! So this is what it’s like to actually be able to work as an artist and not feel like you are just kind of throwing your soul out there for free?’ which I have definitely felt in many of the places that I lived.”

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