Not that she’s complaining about it, but the accolades keep coming for Pittsburgh’s own Njaimeh Njie, regarded as one of the premier artists of the millennial generation.
The New Pittsburgh Courier has learned that Njie, the award-winning photographer, filmmaker and multimedia producer, was recently selected as the fall 2019 Duquesne University/August Wilson House Fellow.
The DU/AWH Fellowship provides opportunities for scholars and artists of color in varied media to engage in literary, cultural and artistic expression that advances their own work and serves the joint interests of Duquesne University and the community, according to the university’s website. The Fellowship is designed to bring national and regional artists and scholars into a collaboration between the famed playwright’s Hill District and educational and artistic institutions.
August Wilson House Fellows at Duquesne serve as artists/scholars-in-residence, living in a Duquesne University apartment while developing their own creative work, engaging in research, teaching and participating in educational events both in the community and on campus.
The fellowship program furthers Duquesne’s signature partnership with the August Wilson House. Fellows are invited to create work that can be showcased in Wilson’s childhood home and the Hill community. They also have access to Duquesne’s resources for scholarly research and public programs and conduct classroom presentations and programs that are hosted on and off campus.
Duquesne and the August Wilson House are piloting the fellowship program with two fellows per academic year for three years, with the goal of sustaining the program thereafter, according to the university.
During the Nov. 14 announcement at Duquesne’s Pappert Lecture Hall, university president Ken Gormley and August Wilson House Executive Director Paul Ellis applauded Njie for her unwavering commitment to her craft and her focus on how African Americans perceive themselves and their experiences in the cities they call home. Njie’s work centers on everyday people, narratives and landscapes.
At the event, Njie showcased some of her latest work, entitled “The Power of Preserving the Present,” which features photographs and interviews she conducted with university and Hill District community members.
Her recent public art project, “Homecoming: Hill District, USA,” has received wide acclaim (www.hillhomecoming.com). The project is a digital archive composed of oral histories and photos arranged to tell “a roughly 100-year history” of the Hill District, according to a release from Duquesne University.
Take a look at the steps of the Kaufmann Center in the Hill, and you’ll see a photo mural of legendary figures in Pittsburgh’s Black community. Njie created the mural, the final piece of the “Homecoming: Hill District, USA” project. Depicted on the steps are the likes of Dorothea Lee Parker (first Black female deputy sheriff in Allegheny County), longtime Ammon Recreation Center director Clarence Battle, community activist Tamanika Howze, Arthur Giles (as a child, with mother, Juanita Flanagan), and Louis C. Coles.
“My work focuses on the Black experience in particular because I believe there’s consistently a need for a diversity of narratives depicting our lives,” Njie said in an artist statement on the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry & Poetics website. “I document the implicit and explicit ways we resist to acknowledge that waking up, working, laughing, struggling, loving, protesting, praying, and creating are all ways to survive and fight against oppression in this world. Documenting these moments is something I feel humbled to do, and that I will continue to strive to do in an honest way.”
Njie is a 2006 Schenley High School graduate—but that’s not the entire story.
She was one of just 18 students to earn the prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma from the program offered at Schenley. According to a 2006 release from Pittsburgh Public Schools, the IB Diploma program is a two-year comprehensive and rigorous pre-university curriculum leading to an IB Diploma for highly motivated secondary school students ages 16 to 19. Students such as Njie who earned the IB Diploma received passing grades in six IB subjects, wrote an independent research paper, fulfilled 150 hours of community service and demonstrated an understanding of the Theory of Knowledge.
Njie then headed to St. Louis, where she earned a B.A. in Film and Media Studies from Washington University in 2010, and later a M.Ed in Secondary Education from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
by Rob Taylor Jr., Courier Staff Writer
NJAIMEH NJIE (Feature photo)
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