Yvonne Bynoe Depicts Black Joy, Everyday Life in How I Got Over

Black history contains a multitude of stories, many of which may go untold forever. In recent years, however, more and more newly discovered stories offer differing perspectives and insight into Black history. 

These are the stories that influenced Yvonne Bynoe to curate her latest exhibit, How I Got Over: Contemporary Black Southern Portraiture, A testimony of community, joy, and triumph.

Currently showing at UNC Charlotte’s Rowe Gallery, where it will be on display through Sept. 24, Bynoe aimed to shift certain narratives around Black history with the exhibit. 

Americans teaching Black history tend to focus on two things: enslavement and the Civil Rights movement. Bynoe said she wants to remind people that there is so much more to the Black American story.

“What I want to not do was to tread old ground,” Bynoe told Queen City Nerve. “It’s about the rich cultural heritage that exists, and also I looked at the show as a way of really talking about the South as the beginning point of the African American experience.

While her exhibit honors the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice issues, those stories won’t be the focus, as Bynoe sought and selected art that depicted Black Southerners outside of the struggles they’ve faced.  

“It’s not to diminish the importance of those topics, but we are multifaceted people,” she continued. “In negating family, community life, I think that they flatten us and make us less interesting. I do think that there’s always a time and a place for that type of social justice art. This was not the exhibition that was for that.”

The South birthed many aspects of Black history: artists, musical genres, and leaders hailed from the South. These are the aspects Bynoe said she hopes to recognize with her exhibit.

To help share these tales, she enlisted artists such as Aliyah Bonnette, Jessica C. Dunston, Asia Hanon, Lori Starnes Isom, Jay McKay, DeMarcus McGaughey, Terron Cooper Sorrells and Dammit Wesley.

Bynoe will host an artist talk and reception at the gallery on Sept. 12 from 6-8 p.m., during which some of the artists whose work is included in the exhibit will discuss the themes shown within. 

How I Got Over is the first in a series of three planned exhibitions at UNC Charlotte focused on Black southern portraiture, all of which will be curated by Yvonne Bynoe. The group exhibition will be followed in spring/summer 2025 by solo exhibitions showcasing the works of 2021 Bennett Prize winner Ayana Ross and Robert Peterson. Both of those exhibits will be displayed at the Projective Eye Gallery at UNC Charlotte Center City.

She Loves Black Art come to fruition

Though she isn’t a traditionally trained artist, Yvonne Bynoe has long been known as an advocate of the arts, specifically visual arts and especially that which came from Black artists. 

Growing up in New York City allowed her to experience a lot of art. From a young age, she was an avid reader and her parents took her to many art exhibits, which is how she fell in love with art’s many forms. 

Attending museums remained a common pastime for Bynoe into adulthood. The Brooklyn Museum, within walking distance of her former home, was a favorite. 

Bynoe also has a passion for traveling, which has given her a discerning eye in how art is defined. 

“When I look at art, I’m looking at what the ‘experts’ say about the canon,” she said. “But I’m also looking at the people who will never be acknowledged as artists simply because of where they come from or how they’re selling the work and all those other factors. I’ve seen great art across the world on street corners. Some of the best art I’ve seen has probably been on street corners, particularly in New York.”

While many other curators and exhibits might focus on an artist’s past experience and training, Bynoe said she avoids that as much as possible because people who are self-taught can make art as good as or better than work from those who are classically trained. 

It was this distinction that inspired her to launch her online forum, She Loves Black Art, in 2018

“I started that because I wasn’t particularly thrilled with what I was seeing online in terms of what was being represented as the art from the [African] diaspora,” she said.

What started out as a hobby morphed into a job as Bynoe built a global audience, for which she works to spotlight obscure artists. 

“To me, it’s better quality of work,” she said. “So that’s why my page was not about the CVV [resume], it’s about the quality of work. I always tell people, ‘This is my perspective.’ There’s certainly other perspectives out there, but then they should set up their own pages.”

Bynoe made her curatorial debut last year at the Brooklyn Collective Gallery in Uptown with The Renaissance of Brooklyn: History is Present, which drew links between Brooklyn, New York and the since-razed Black community of Brooklyn in Charlotte while exploring the broader theme of gentrification as a whole. 

Read more: Brooklyn Collective Picks up the Torch of Charlotte’s Black History (2021)

Having seen that exhibit, Adam Justice, director of galleries with UNC Charlotte’s College of Arts & Architecture, approached Bynoe to curate a three-part series of exhibits at the university that will center Black joy.

“I feel like UNC Charlotte really should be applauded for doing this,” Bynoe said. “They are really placing this topic matter in a substantive way by committing to do three exhibitions on it. Adam Justice really should get his kudos for having the foresight to do this because a lot of people talk about it, but to actually be about it and devote the resources to it, that’s a very different thing.”

How I Got Over showcases multiple mediums

In curating works for How I Got Over, Yvonne Bynoe was careful to represent a wide range of artists not only working in different mediums — photography, tapestry, traditional painting and collages — but representing different subregions of the American South. 

“I insisted that it be a cross section of Southerners, not just from the Carolinas,” she said. “I think that anybody that goes into the exhibition and looks at the various works, they will get a sense about what the artist is saying about themselves because these are the artists speaking about their own experience as being Southerners, what they felt was important, how they see the world in their perspective.”

In recent years, Bynoe has found exhibits featuring Black life and personhood to be one-dimensional, which inspired her to take the approach she has with her latest showing. 

“I saw repeating themes, and I don’t want to talk about particular galleries or institutions, but it was just some of the same things, the victimization, the trauma,” she said. “I don’t even like some of the terminology because, again, we’re human beings.”

Her goal with How I Got Over was to depict the everyday lives of Black Southerners beyond those who have fought against oppression — the joyful and the mundane. 

“A lot of the conversations among intellectuals was art should be used for liberation,” she said. “So for a lot of Black folks, the idea of making art for art’s sake has not historically been at the forefront.That’s why a lot of Black abstract artists had difficult times, because their work was not deemed as being political enough. I think that we’re broadening the scope of what the message can or should be for Black Americans.”

While she wants to impress upon viewers the humanness of Black people, Bynoe also hopes this exhibit will help Charlotte’s art scene as a whole.

“I’m not a big proponent of hyper-growth, because I do think you can destroy the reasons why a place is great,” she said. “But I think the people have to make some decisions about what they want to see going forward in Charlotte. What I do know is I’m very clear about Charlotte; as it’s growing, the art sector has to grow with it. And I think that’s one of the things I’m hoping to contribute is to be part of that growth … and just bringing different perspectives.”