Threads: The Art Exchange is pleased to present Griot Genesis, a digital exhibition by Miriam Uhura curated by Sydney Frakes.

Griot Genesis unfolds through image and sound, exploring lineage, becoming, and black identity. An artist interview + curated playlist accompany this exhibition. We invite you to listen, reflect, and engage with the conversational and sonic landscapes that inform Uhura’s practice.
Extending beyond the visual, this conversation invites listeners into Uhura’s creative universe. Speaking candidly about her practice, we discuss the artist’ influences, creative autonomy, and how lineage, memory, + the culture ground the works presented in the digital exhibition.
Listen on Apple Podcasts + Listen on Spotify
In this aural extension, we collaborated with Uhura to curate a playlist of music that moves through vulnerability, love, + becoming, mirroring the layered storytelling presented in her exhibition.
Listen on Spotify

LISTEN WHILE YOU VIEW

Miriam Uhura (b. 1997) is a self-taught painter from Highland Park, Michigan. Her practice centers cultural memory, family, and Black interiority, rendered through intimate portraiture and narrative-driven imagery. Working with expressive color and controlled gesture, Uhura captures moments of emotional proximity, images that resist spectacle in favor of presence. Her paintings hold space for tenderness, identity, and becoming, offering representations of Black life that are grounded, expansive, and unresolved. Alongside her painting practice, Uhura works as a body artist at Bloodline Dynasty, a tattoo studio in Metro Detroit. Across both canvas and skin, her work reflects a commitment to visibility and agency, treating self-expression as a site of care and self-possession.

Uhura’s work moves between memory and futurity, honoring lineage while insisting on possibility.

“With being an artist, I am now able to use my voice in ways that don’t freak me out. Art has taught me about vulnerability and has opened me up to it. This journey has allowed me to use my big girl voice. Each brush stroke contributes to the message I’m trying to share, even if it’s about my authenticity in being self-taught. To those who have experienced my work or have included in their own experience, I would like to leave them with the feeling of being seen or maybe even understood because through art I am now able to understand myself. This is for me the most grand experience in viewing art.”

— Miriam Uhura, Artist Statement

Genesis + Continuity

This body of work considers lineage not as something static, but as something actively lived. Through intimate portraiture and storytelling, Uhura explores how family, ancestry, and memory inform the ongoing act of becoming. Painting becomes a way of holding presence, immortalizing loved ones not through nostalgia, but through recognition, care, and continuity. These works honor grief while allowing space for life, individuality, and forward motion. This theme positions family not only as origin, but as living influence, one that continues to shape identity, emotional intelligence, and creative voice.

“As I move, I take my family with me because it is the grandest prize, the grandest reward to immortalize them from moments back then to now. I would say now, I paint them more presently.”

— Miriam Uhura

A Collect Call From The Grief Hotline – 2024, oil and fabric on canvas, 30x40 inches

Brenda The Matriarch of Cool — 2025, oil and fabric on canvas, 30x40 inches

The Proof Is In The Stitching – 2023, oil on canvas, 36x36 inches

The Winter Soldier – 2023, oil on canvas, 36x36 inches

“As an artist, my main principle is that I have to have autonomy... it plays such a big part in how I create, especially the self portraits. When I do these self portraits, it’s always a reflection of who I was and it invites the viewer to see who I am becoming. ”

— Miriam Uhura

In Thy Image (Nsorroma) – 2026, oil and rhinestones on canvas, 11x18 inches

In Thy Image (Nsorroma) – 2026, oil and rhinestones on canvas, 11x18 inches (detail)

The Alchemist – 2025, acrylic and oil on canvas, 30x40 inches

Presence, Vulnerability & the Intimate Gaze

Uhura’s practice is grounded in intimacy. Through close-up compositions and carefully held gestures, her work resists distance, inviting viewers into emotional proximity rather than observation. Vulnerability, often kept at arm’s length, is rendered here with clarity and care. These paintings prioritize presence over performance, capturing the quiet complexity of being seen as oneself. Emotion is not dramatized; it is allowed to exist, fully and honestly.

“Vulnerability, with me starts with the concept and then it goes up a tier by me creating it. And then the grandest act of vulnerability is me showcasing it... when people see the work, I want it to be so present in their face like this is emotional, this is sad, this is striking, this is heroic but it invites them to step right into it.”

— Miriam Uhura

The Ballad of Belonging – 2025, oil on canvas, 20x 20 inches

A(void)ant – 2025, oil on canvas, 20x20 inches

(it’s fine) – 2024, oil and yarn on canvas, 24x24 inches

The Art of Surrender – 2026, oil and thread on canvas, 36x36 inches

“I love to add the element of fabric because it gives the subjects life I like to put life into the subjects... It helps the subject breathe and it helps the piece breathe a little bit more when I add those touches of fabric... It’s a constant cycle of giving more life to the work, to myself as an artist, and then to the viewers to look at.”

— Miriam Uhura

The Art of Surrender – 2026, oil and thread on canvas, 36x36 inches (detail)

Mini Star – 2025, oil on canvas, 4x4 inches

Safe Haven – 2025, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30x40 inches

Seasons Change – 2025, oil on canvas, 36x36 inches

Uhura, oil on canvas, 30x40 inches

BLACK STAR – 2025, oil on canvas, 24x24 inches

Living Folklore: Griot, Freedom + Black Legacy

Drawing from folklore, lived experience, and collective memory, Uhura’s work expands the visual language of Black identity beyond limitation or stereotype. Figures such as cowboys and cowgirls emerge not as nostalgia, but as symbols of agency, resilience, and freedom, repositioned through a contemporary Black lens. Acting as a modern griot, Uhura tells stories that honor everyday realities, imagination, and multiplicity. These works insist on possibility that Black life can be tender, powerful, playful, and expansive all at once.

“All of my cowboys and cowgirls I paint are not always strong. They have their moments of sorrow, grief, or whatever emotion may come. but it’s being strong and present in that emotion that gives them that feel of resilience.”

— Miriam Uhura