Threads: The Art Exchange is pleased to present Thank You for the Flowers, a digital exhibition by Maryam Faison curated by Sydney Frakes.
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.
“My work is an exploration of identity, emotion, and the quiet complexities that shape who we are. I create from a place of honesty-pulling from personal experiences, memories, and the subtle moments that often go unnoticed but leave a lasting imprint. I'm drawn to the tension between vulnerability and strength. In my work, I try to hold space for both allowing softness to exist alongside resilience. Each piece is a reflection of that balance, an attempt to translate feeling into form in a way that others can connect with, interpret, and see themselves in. I don't aim to provide clear answers, Instead, I create to ask questions-about selfhood, connection, and what it means to exist authentically. My process is intuitive and evolving, guided more by feeling than by rigid structure. Imperfection is an important part of that process; it mirrors the human experience and keeps the work honest.Ultimately, my art is about connection-between myself and the work, and between the work and the viewer. If someone can find a piece of their own story within mine, then the work has done what it was meant to do.”
— Maryam Faison, Artist Statement
While You Look
The presented work is
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
In Thy Image (Nsorroma) – 2026, oil and rhinestones on canvas, 11x18 inches
The Alchemist – 2025, acrylic and oil on canvas, 30x40 inches
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.”
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.”
Baptized In The Fire – 2025, oil and lace on canvas, 20x20 inches
Ego Death – 2025, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
Ego Death – 2025, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 inches (detail)
Anti Eurocentric Beauty – 2024, oil on canvas, 30x40 inches
Primarily Speaking this Ain’t My First Rodeo – 2025, mixed media (oil, acrylic, fabric) on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
Primarily Speaking this Ain’t My First Rodeo – 2025, mixed media (oil, acrylic, fabric) on canvas, 24 x 24 inches (detail)
How They Lay (Reprise) — 2026, oil and lace on 30x40 canvas
Come Hell or High Water – 2024, oil on canvas, 30x40 inches
Come Hell or High Water – 2024, oil on canvas, 30x40 inches (detail)
When I first started I was focused on highlighting the joy... As I am developing as an artist, I like to play in my darkness. I think it's healthy and thats what alchemists do... Now I paint the darker feelings, I paint the darker emotion and in it you can feel light.
— Miriam Uhura
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Any inquiries about the exhibition please contact: Sydney Frakes
All images are courtesy of the artist.