CONSERVATORY XR

The Great Northern presents: CONSERVATORY XR.

In tandem with the physical installation, CONSERVATORY XR is a metaverse art gallery featuring 15 additional local artists curated by Jovan C. Speller and Andy DuCett.

The work featured here was created by Black Minnesotans during the uprisings and highlights methods of survival and shows how innovation and creativity can thrive.

Meet the artists, onboard, and enter the space below.

MEET THE ARTISTS

Ashley DuBose - @ashleydubose
Bobby Rogers - @bobbyrogers_
Jayanthi Rajasa - @dotfrofeather
Addis Alemu - @addiiiissss
Donna Ray - @spiritmovesdonna
​Coco Nashay - @coconashay
Yunior Rebollar Carbonell - @negrofinocubanegrofino

MMYYKK - @mmyykkvibes
Junauda Petrus-Nasah - @junauda
Nance Musinguzi - @afrikansniper
Lewiee Blaze - @lewieeblaze
Ron Brown - @afroanimeillustrator_ronbrown
Christopher E. Harrison - @genothehag
Kellan McLemore - @kellandavid
Raygen Samone - @raygensamone
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WATCH THIS FIRST

​Enter CONSERVATORY XR

TRY THE EXPERIENCE

ASHLEY DuBOSE

Ashley DuBose is a Minneapolis-based singer, songwriter and actress. She was a Top 32 contestant on NBC’s “The Voice” and voted Best Female R&B Singer by City Pages in their 2015 “Best of the Twin Cities” issue. She has traveled the world performing at special occasions, local community events, corporate galas and concerts all while balancing the responsibilities of motherhood and entrepreneurship. DuBose holds a degree in Mathematics from St. Catherine University and was a first generation college graduate. She is the first person in her family to own real estate purchasing two investment properties in 2021 and recently joined a local non profit to help low to moderate-income families achieve homeownership through the land trust model. With baby number two on the way this Spring, Ashley is working tirelessly to show her children that dreams do come true with faith, perseverance and integrity.

WEBSITE

ADDIS ALEMU

Addis is a black queer ceramic artist based in South Minneapolis. Their work is based on their thoughts, feelings and experiences. Their work with clay is grounded in a meditative and experimental approach through which they process their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Addis creates clay works that explore forms, technique, distinct line work, colors, and flowing textures.​

BOBBY ROGERS

Bobby Rogers (b. 1992) is a visual historian, photographer and art director from Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work has broken barriers across various industries and has continued to garner the attention of publications across the globe. His work seamlessly blends his passion for design and futurism with his long standing commitment for intellectual rigor and cultural exploration. His visual work incorporates themes of identity, history and philosophy to tell subtle stories of beauty amidst precarity. 

CHRIS HARRISON

 The “Black Bounds” is a series of works depicting silhouetted Black figures in distressed, contorted poses referencing bodies in emotional anguish and captivity. The figures’ bodies are rendered as a two dimensional abstracted forms with various focal points of the body that are realistically rendered and are bound by restraints whether they be physical or environmental. The contrasting elements of flatness and dimensionality speak to the visible/invisible context that Blacks experience on a daily basis in society. I see this series as a metaphor of a visual space that confronts the questions head-on of how to address the shortcomings of humanity through the lens of Black existence.

WEBSITE

COCO NASHAY

Nakesha Caldwell is an internationally known designer and artist who is passionate about helping single mothers thrive in a state of wellness despite life’s hurdles.
She is a fourth generation north Minneapolis resident who has been a servant of the community she continues to live in and support.
WEBSITE

DONNA RAY

I am an African American ceramic artist/writer of many past multicultural heritages from beyond.  Severely visually impaired since birth, I’ve worked in my chosen discipline of the clay arts for over twenty years. I was selected to be the BISQUE Emerging Artist in Residence for Northern Clay Center (NCC) in 2019 and now in 2021 I retain a studio residence at NCC. Even through the strange year of 2020, I stayed busy in the arts as one of the participating artists in the Minneapolis Black Lives Matter public art street mural on July 18, 2020 (designing and painting the letter I), creating the "Zip Code" project, and the "Messages in a Bottle" project which is ongoing and was a part of the Messages of Hope Mini-Grants through Forecast Public Art. I also wrote an article for Studio Potter "Imagination Never Dies: A Resident Artist’s Coming of Age". The "Messages in a Bottle" project was born during the initial quarantine in March 2020 when the whole state was shut down due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and I had to create a staycation studio inside of my one-bedroom apartment home. I had no tools or clay supplies at home and had to start from scratch, getting a ride from Metro Mobility to Continental Clay to pick-up the supplies for the home studio. Had to get as much clay as I possibly could before everything shut down, and that is how the “Messages in a Bottle” was born.

KELLAN McLEMORE

Kellan David is an interdisciplinary creative using the versatility and range of his creative talents/artistic style to spread love and compassion and to make a positive impact on the world. With a current focus on large scale art and new opportunities in the digital art space, Kellan incorporates a wide range of materials and design processes to pursue artistic challenges, ranging from commercial design to fine art and murals. Despite no formal artistic training he has an acute understanding of creative and visual elements and exhibits an innate ability to combine a variety of techniques, elements, and sources of inspiration to produce an end product that is aesthetically pleasing and capable of evoking emotion. ​

JAYANTHI RAJASA

 Jayanthi Rajasa is an archivist songstress collecting songs that speak to her struggle and empowerment and ability to be, change, and move forward while honoring the unremembered changers and movers of yore. She sings for people passing worlds (new or old or hardly used---meaning births and children, hospice and funerals, free and incarcerated, loved or lost) and has been in more than 10 bands in The Twin Cities

Jayanthi is born of an East Indian Man and a Afro-Indigenous Woman. She loves the Theater! She loves being a teaching artist to every age and ability and holding song or poetry circles. She loves healing. She continues to work with the Million Artist Movement to dismantle racism and injustice towards people of color and dream collectively to produce actions for change and Black Liberation.
Jayanthi also works with Mama Mosaic on Minnesota Girls Are Not For Sale seeking freedom for women and girl sex slaves in Minnesota.

JUNAUDA PETRUS-NASAH

Junauda Petrus-Nasah is a creative activist, writer, playwright, and multi-dimensional performance artist who is born on Dakota land, West-Indian descended, and African-sourced. Her work centers around Black wildness, futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, spectacle and shimmer. She is a co-founder of Free Black Dirt, writer and director of Sweetness of Wild, an episodic-poetic film series, and her first book, The Stars and The Blackness Between Them received the 2020 Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award.

WEBSITE

LEWIEE BLAZE

Lewiee Blaze is a Minnesota born and raised star studded creator, performer, thought leader, and visionary. His artistry explores the importance of self-determination, healing, and mobilization of underserved communities. Since graduating from Studio 4, otherwise known as High School for Recording Arts, Blaze has been actively pursuing his music career while simultaneously building a social-enterprise company to instill hope and opportunity for the future of black youth. Lewiee Blaze passions are to educate, entertain, and empower others. 

“We Will Breathe, for the children of the next 400 years."
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WEBSITE​

MMYYKK

Mychal "MMYYKK" Fisher is a multi-modal artist working between both audio and visual disciplines.

WEBSITE

NANCE MUSINGUZI

Nance Musinguzi (he/they) is a Ugandan/Liberian, first-generation non-binary/trans American documentary photographer, multidisciplinary artist and storyteller based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Over the past 8 years, they have dedicated their visual storytelling and reflexive research practice to documenting the nuances of contemporary American life, identity and culture through a critical lens. They have self-published 8 photography books, and most recently with Wise Ink Publishing, The Letter Formally Known As Q: Voices From Minnesota’s Queer Immigrant Community, in 2021. They are also a 2021-22 Black Seed Fellow.

WEBSITE

RAYGEN SAMONE

Raygen Symone is a Documentary Photographer in Minneapolis, MN that creates images to cultivate home towards wonder, delight, wisdom and gratitude.

RON BROWN

Multidisciplinary Afrocentric artist in MPLS.

WEBSITE

YUNIOR REBOLLAR CARBONELL

Yunior Rebollar is a mixed media artist primarily working in portrait drawing and digital manipulation. Originally from Cotorro in La Habana, Cuba, Yunior now resides in Northern Minnesota. Yunior's work focuses on closing gaps and building bridges to both real and futuristic representations of Blackness. His work establishes origins of reflection, occupying the visual space of Black representation and starts from an attitude of acceptance. An acceptance of the yet undefined nature of Blackness. His work restores and reveals an authentic view of Blackness as a paradigm – as a container of a vast and primal culture, full of knowledge and philosophies that are still utilized.

Learn more about the physical installation