Written by Nina Evans for THE ARTISTS FORUM MAGAZINE
Edited by Amos White V for THE ARTISTS FORUM, INC.
Photos: Courtesy of Weeksville Heritage Center, Amos White V, Wikipedia
COLLAGING PAST AND FUTURE: THE NONA HENDRYX INSTALLATION & INTERVIEW AT WEEKSVILLE
NEW YORK, NY (June 26, 2025) Visionary, multi-hyphenate artist Nona Hendryx unveiled an interactive mural entitled Black Visionaries: Weeksville Then and Now in Brooklyn at the Weeksville Heritage Center this June as part of her artist residency there. Though she is perhaps best known for her solo music as well as her work in 70’s trio Labelle of Lady Marmalade fame, Hendryx is no stranger to shattering expectations as an Afrofuturist artist and coloring outside of the lines, which is exactly what she does with this new augmented reality experience— bringing the mural, and the history of Weeksville itself, off of the wall and into the real world with the onlooker. On May 30, we sat down with Hendryx for an in-person interview on site.
Weeksville is unassuming on the outside, hidden in the middle of Crown Heights, but inside, there is a window into a powerful piece of NYC black history. In 1838, eleven years after the abolition of slavery in New York State, Weeksville was founded to enfranchise free Black people via the ownership of property. It became a vibrant community, with its own churches, schools, and institutions, and its own baseball team (The Unknowns) and newspaper (The Freedman’s Torchlight). Today, Weeksville Heritage Center serves to preserve this history and continue to provide for the community, educating through a social justice and arts-minded lens.
“I came here and it was just a magical moment,” Hendryx explains. “The space, the history, the houses, the center that they built to preserve it and share it, and the people who work here— That’s what really inspired me… feeling the energy that emanates from the space.” After experiencing the center myself, I know exactly what she means. On the day of our interview, the auditorium was abuzz with a youth fashion show as children shuffled in and out in floor length dresses, crocheted pieces, and more. In another room, there was an event for girls who code. Outside of the main building, in the enclosed green space that leads to the historic houses, there was a sense of calm despite the liveliness of the day. One could feel the sense of history and the oasis-like quality that historic Weeksville embodies.
Black Visionaries is a sprawling collage drawing images from Weeksville’s archives. It dynamically draws the onlooker through a path where Black excellence is celebrated across history. Beyond viewing the physical mural itself, visitors will have the opportunity to use augmented reality technology to bring the piece to life. The AR experience features a soundscape created by Nia Simone, voices from the community itself, and more. “We wanted to create something where people learned about Weeksville in a different way, to move it forward, so it’s not so much in the past,” says Hendryx. “For young people, specifically, to come and engage with the mural and have it animated in front of them and tell the story.”
The piece combines Hendryx’s many practices. “Everything I’ve ever done has been fed into this project,” she tells me. In 2024, Hendryx spearheaded the installation Dream Machine at Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City program. Dream Machine was a three-part exhibition exploring themes of Afrofuturism and the entwining of art and technology. The augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence led project took over Lincoln Center’s entire campus and enveloped it in a vision of what could be. Hendryx explains, “Dream Machine was really a two year immersion in creating multidisciplinary art and immersive experiences.” The project began at Berklee College of Music, where Hendryx teaches, and was an interdisciplinary work with the Berklee ensemble, the Electronic Production Design department, Boston Conservatory dancers, and other departments that “weren’t creating together.”
Working on a huge collaboration like Dream Machine, she says, framed the work she wanted to create at Weeksville. “All the things that I’ve done, that I’ve learned, the people I’ve worked with, it comes through in some way. Of course, the music, because every experience is music driven. The artwork that I’ve created — collage work has been instrumental in being able to do collage here and to engage with the collage at Lincoln Center. Some of the technology studies that I’ve done, definitely, I would not be able to do this if I had not embraced technology or electronics really early on in my career.”
“AR, VR, and AI are going to be important in preserving history. I think the things that we’re doing here… telling the story again in a different way for a different generation to engage with these spaces and institutions that are somewhat in the past,” Hendryx explains. Especially now with the widespread adoption of AI into more and more programs and fields, the conversation around technology’s future can be grim. Oftentimes, the fear is that something has come to replace the order of operations as we know it, divorcing us from the past. Hendryx believes in a more creative, human, and hands-on approach to these technologies, one that serves the past instead of erasing it. “It’s a part of Afrofuturism. Afro—kind of the past—futurism, these two that are married,” she says. “Using VR, AR, and AI creates immersive experiences, so people feel a connection…There are some things over time that are just going to disappear, for different reasons, whether it’s urban renewal, lack of interest, shift and change, natural disasters… If we can capture those spaces and that history in VR and AR, there are places that people can visit in a digital world that may not exist anymore.” Her mural at Weeksville seeks to overlay the past, present, and future in a forward-thinking form of collage.
Dr. Raymond Codrington, President and CEO of Weeksville Heritage Center, praises the installation: “I think Nona’s exhibit has done an incredible job of tying the historical and the contemporary together. It’s a very different way of interpreting our history and our existence as an institution and an historic site.” Weeksville, he says, carries a profound sense of peace and belonging, one that is echoed from its preserved relics and through the modern, contemporary style community center on the grounds. “It’s meant to give you an experience, so you get to see how Weeksville started in the houses and to where it is now as a cultural institution.” Hendryx’s mural aids in this walk from past to present, showing that they’re not as far apart as they may seem.
“The one thing that I can’t translate in an interview or discussion,” Codrington says, “is the sense of history. When you walk on site and you walk close to the houses, there’s something very profound about being in a place where ancestors and elders once lived. You go in the houses and actually get that feeling. And I feel that’s the intangible part of Weeksville that doesn’t always translate. So I encourage people to come visit if you can.”
Hendryx’s Black Visionaries is on display all summer at the Weeksville Heritage Center until August 28.
For more information about Black Visionaries visit: https://weeksvillesociety.org/black-visionaries-weeksville-then-and-now/
For more information about Nona Hendryx visit: https://www.nonahendryx.com/
For more information about Weeksville Heritage Center visit: https://weeksvillesociety.org/
