You Really Gotta See It Live Artist Talk

Hasani Sahlehe grew up in a four-generation home in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. He was raised by his grandmother and among his many relatives, several of whom were musicians, educators, artists, and fervent preservers of local history and culture.

Sahlehe graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2015. His practice, keenly centered on color and exploring the possibilities of the body of paint, seeks to engage the spiritual through the material. He sees his paintings as bearers of human memory, emotion, and presence. Sahlehe’s work is rooted in abstraction, embracing a broad array of cultural practices, including color field painting, neo-expressionism, ancient and indigenous architecture and writing, and the syncretic, often improvised nature of hip hop,

Sahlehe is a recipient of a 2023 Macdowell Fellowship. He has exhibited internationally and has had solos at SCAD Museum of Art, Adams and Ollman in Portland, OR, Tops Gallery in Memphis, TN, and Gallery 12.26, in Dallas, TX among others

Y. Malik Jalal was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in the Atlanta area. He received a B.A. from Oglethorpe University in 2016, He is currently an MFA candidate in Sculpture at the Yale School of Art. Jalal is a metalworker by trade. His work engages with the black family and legacy, it is concerned with a material discourse of resistance, labor, and refuge, Jalal had a solo exhibition in 2019 at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, and at MARCH gallery in Manhattan, among others. He has also curated exhibitions at the Hi-Lo Press, and the Alabama Contemporary and recently had an essay published in Art Papers.