This Black History Month, Kidspace will celebrate the strength and resiliency of the Black community throughout history and now even during a time of loss and displacement due to the Eaton Fire.

Kidspace is proud to sponsor the 43rd Annual City of Pasadena Black History Month Festival, on Saturday, February 15 at Robinson Park. The museum will host a family art program entitled Faces of Dena designed to celebrate the strength of the community represented in its members.

Faces of Dena continues at Kidspace on Sunday, February 16 along with performances from community groups.

Festival attendees and museum guests are invited to contribute their Polaroid portrait and reflection to the art piece or take it home as a memory.

The Face of Dena art project is free to the public at the city’s festival and included with museum admission on Sunday.

The African Diaspora has a history of displacement, but also a legacy of resistance and resilience through creativity. Amid ongoing suffering and loss, people carry community in them, through their survival, their memories, and their storytelling that disrupts erasure and reimagines place.

In collaboration with Transformative Arts, Kidspace will host Los Angeles-based artist Duane Paul honors his friend Hilton Als, writer, UC Berkeley professor, chronicler and visual storyteller with the Faces of Dena to document and celebrate the strength of our community embedded in its members. It is the who giving meaning to the architectural structures of our worlds.
Paul, who spent his formative years in Jamaica and New York uses his photo-based selfie practice to investigate the many aspects of his identity– immigrant, Black man, artist, and queer person. He photographs himself in various attire and adornments at various angles and lightening to illuminate the conjunctures of his plurality. For the Faces of Dena he turns from his multiple self-portraits to engage Als’ polaroid practice that both visually and literally reflects on his relationships to the people who comprise his community. Als shares these snapshots and his written reflections in an Instagram practice that has become a standard bearer of community based visual language.

Recognizing these contributions, the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens named Hilton Als the inaugural 2023 Hannah and Russel Kully Distinguished Fellow in the History of American Art. As a chronicler and part of our community, Als reminds us that people are the foundation of community and the ways we remember can sustain us through the life’s tapestry of tragedy and elation.

Polaroids are temporary yet enduring in the public imagination. We invite you to add your portrait to Faces of Dena and contribute your reflections on our community that continues wherever we find ourselves.