Professor Clareese Hill has received a Mills Institute Innovation Lab Grant for her project “The Practice-based Artistic Archive: Unearthing Early Black Stories in New England.” For this project, Clareese Hill is partnering with Artist collaborator Elisa H. Hamilton.

Mills Institute explains, “Dr. Hill will be collaborating with artist and researcher Elisa H. Hamilton, a socially engaged multimedia artist. Together, they are continuing their research project originally commissioned by Emerson Contemporary for the multiyear Un-Monument initiative with the City of Boston, investigating underrepresented narratives of Black life in early Boston. Working with the Museum of African American History (MAAH) archives in Boston and Nantucket, the project focuses on moments of non-legibility, community care praxis, and abolitionist work. Rather than emphasizing well-documented history, their research highlights the “in-between” stories—the connective tissue of the abolitionist movement.

They seek to reimagine how archives and these lesser-known narratives can be made accessible to the public. The outcome will include a collaborative body of artwork, pedagogical materials, workshops, and a written contribution on artistic research and archival mining. Collaborating with each other, institutions, and community members becomes a key strategy for refusal in their research methodology.”

Clareese shares further details about the current iteration of the project, now on view through Emerson Contemporary: “The Black Boston Dream Oracle” is an AR walk through Beacon Hill, with stops at The African Meeting House, The home for Aged Colored Women, and the Phillips School. At each location, an oracle griot will conjure their provocation from a speculative reality informed by a fragmented past. The oracles are inspired by Maria Stewart, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Chloe Russel, Harriet Hayden, and the women from the Home for Aged Colored Women. The oracles are narrated by 3D scans of archival objects. In this project, AR becomes a tool for justice-oriented storytelling and place-based pedagogy.”

Elisa H. Hamilton’s current iteration of the project, “Glimpses of Glapion” also on view through Emerson Contemporary is an AR story about Louis Glapion, a free Black barber and hairdresser from the French West Indies who lived in Boston between 1777 and 1814. Hamilton’s research suggests that Glapion may have been formerly enslaved and later emancipated before arriving in Boston. Archival records indicate that Glapion owned and operated a successful hair business that served Boston’s upper-class White clientele, was common among Black barbers in this time period.

Clareese Hill, PhD. is an Assistant Professor of XR Technologies and Immersive Media in CAMD. She combines her background in art and research to explore identity, particularly from the perspective of an Afro-Caribbean American woman. Her interdisciplinary work uses emerging technologies to examine the validity of identity as a concept. Her scholarship extends beyond academia, with lectures and presentations in the U.S. and internationally, including England, Finland, Sweden, Australia, Ireland, and Portugal.