People

Photo by Susan Fried

Wa Na Wari was founded in April, 2019, in direct response to community conversations convened by Wa Na Wari’s four co-founders, between 2017 and 2019.

Two of us, Inye Wokoma and Elisheba Johnson, are Black artists directly impacted by Seattle’s displacement and affordability crisis. Inye Wokoma’s grandmother is 93 years old and living with Alzheimers. As the guardian of her estate he has been fighting on her behalf to maintain ownership of the homes she and her husband worked their entire lives for. Elisheba Johnson, born and raised in Seattle, has worked for over 15 years securing affordable and relevant cultural spaces for BIPOC communities and artists in Seattle.

Two of us, Jill Freidberg and Rachel Kessler, are white artists using art and stories to challenge white supremacy, especially as it is expressed through gentrification and displacement.

Inye Wokoma’s family has lived in the Central District since the 1940s. As a journalist, filmmaker and visual artist, he explores themes of identity, community, history, land, politics and power through the lens of personal and visual narratives. His work is informed by a deep social practice that prioritizes the utility of his art to the collective welfare of his community. Three of his most recent projects, A Central Vision, An Elegant Utility, and This Is Who We Are, represent prismatic explorations of the history, current experience, and future of Seattle’s African American Community. In addition to these projects, Inye has been working in collaboration with Seattle Public Library and colleague Jill Freidberg to create a catalog of oral histories of Seattleites reflecting on community history and current changes.

Inye completed a degree in journalism and filmmaking from Clark Atlanta University before establishing Ijo Arts Media Group in Seattle. His work as a photojournalist has appeared in USA Today, ColorsNW, Washington Law and Politics, and Chicago Wilderness, among others. In 2004 and 2006 respectively, he received two awards for editorial photography from the Society of Professional Journalists Western Washington Chapter, for coverage of the communities of color in the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. His collaboration with journalist Silja Talvi on Washington State’s three strikes law won a 2004 National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award for criminal justice reportage. These journalism awards were earned while shooting for ColorsNW Magazine under the editorial guidance of Naomi Ishisaka. His film Lost & (Puget) Sound, received a 2012 Telly Award and won Best Film for Youth at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival. In 2017, he participated in the visual arts group show Borderlands, which went on to receive an Americans for the Arts 2018 Public Art Network Year in Review Award, for its collective exploration of national identity, immigration, and belonging. Inye continues to serve his community from his home in Seattle’s Central District, where he currently serves as board president for LANGSTON. He was a founding board member and former board president for Got Green and also served on the board of Nature Consortium.

Elisheba Johnson is a conceptual artist heavily influenced by the Fluxus movement and the accessibility of art experiences and objects. She sees art “taking the role of philosophy in the 21st century” and providing “the frame for discussing and solving our complex and important civic problems." Johnson, who has a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, was the owner of Faire Gallery Café, a multi-use art space that held art exhibitions, music shows, poetry readings and creative gatherings. Since 2013, Johnson has been at the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture where she is a public art project manager and works on capacity building initiatives.

In 2018, Johnson started a public art practice with her collaborator Kristen Ramirez. They believe in creating opportunities that bring equity, accessibility, relevance, and engagement to a community, and they believe that every project ought to begin with meaningful engagement with the people who occupy the place, whether through questionnaires, story-telling, historical research, or celebration. Elisheba is currently a member of the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Network advisory council and has won four Americans for the Arts Public Art Year in Review Awards for her work.

Rachel Kessler is a writer, cartoonist, multi-disciplinary collaborator and educator who explores landscape and community. As a mother of young children with limited resources, she experimented with boundary-breaking performance art and video, co-founding interactive poetry collaborations Typing Explosion and Vis-à-Vis Society. Her work is deeply rooted in place: she lives and works on Yesler Way, the street her great-great grandparents immigrated to, worked on, and died on. Currently she works on a community cartography project called “Profanity Hill: A Tour of Yesler Way” and is an Artist-In-Residence at public housing project Yesler Terrace, where community members activated a vacant apartment slated for demolition with live music, storytelling, potlucks, dancing, and collective murals.

Jill Freidberg’s work reflects her belief that responsible storytelling can build understanding and solidarity across borders and across the street. Freidberg is a documentary filmmaker, oral historian, radio producer, and youth media educator. She founded Shelf Life, a community story project using oral history, photography, public art, and podcasts to amplify community voices, learn from neighborhood stories, and interrupt narratives of erasure in Seattle’s Central District. For 18 months, Shelf Life occupied a Central District storefront. In that space, Shelf Life interviewed over 70 community members, provided free workshops in audio recording and interview techniques, hosted youth art exhibits, and convened neighborhood celebrations. After the storefront was demolished for market-rate development, Freidberg co-produced a ten episode podcast featuring stories gathered in Shelf Life interviews.
Freidberg has produced and directed four award-winning feature-length documentaries, including the ground-breaking collaborative effort This is What Democracy Looks Like (2000), and countless documentary shorts. Freidberg teaches media production at the University of Washington Bothell.