Tag Archives: Art

The Potential Project: A Space for Mourning and Imagination

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By Brianna A.

The board in Bentrice Jusu’s studio room is covered in faces, some smiling, some impassive, but all still in time. Every photograph on the wall has its own story that was cut short. Each of a person lost to gun violence, their potential never reached. Yet for Bentrice Jusu, their stories haven’t ended, instead taking a new form, as she spins tragedy into something beautiful and inspiring. 

Bentrice Jusu, a Trenton-based artist, educator, and firefighter, is working on her latest endeavor, The Potential Project, a mixed-media memorial that transforms grief into public art and interactive digital storytelling. Her mission is simple: to acknowledge the stories and lives of those who have been lost to violence and to heal the community. 

Back in 2016, Jusu survived the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the deadliest attack on LGBTQ+ people in U.S. history. It was her birthday. She was supposed to be celebrating. Instead, 49 people were murdered that night. Jusu lived, but the experience stayed inside her.

“That was one of the main reasons this whole thing started,” Jusu says. 

Three months later, back home in Trenton, one of her students, 16-year-old Jahday Twisdae, was shot and killed. Another life cut short. Another future and potential unrealized. 

“From love and existence to the actual state of Trenton, New Jersey, the amount of deaths that were faced,” Jusu says. “So you’ll see Jahday is the start of this work.” 

Today, a yellow portrait of Jahday Twisdae sits outside Jusu’s studio room door to be visualized with the new app Artivive. Twisdae’s image is joined by many others. Yellow squares with faces reveal videos, audio clips, photos, and memories recorded—making the once two-dimensional art more alive and personal.

Bentrice Jusu’s vision is deeply personal, but it doesn’t stand alone. Artists from the community helped bring it to life, each adding their voice and own personal expression of grief, memory, and potential. 

One of those artists is Hana Sabree, a storyteller, writer, and singer, based in Trenton, New Jersey, who has been pursuing her passion of music ever since she was a young girl in grade school.

Sabree recalled her experience in kindergarten, singing a song for the talent show at her school, where she froze in lack of belief in herself. Yet Sabree didn’t give up. She persisted, gaining confidence as she grew. Now she is happy to present something she is enormously proud of.

In the search for other artists, Jusu reached out to Hana Sabree, having known her previously from the art scene in Trenton. Sabree felt excitement and immense pride to be involved in such a project.

In June 2025, Sabree released Just A Lil EP, a three-song offering of tender, soul-healing belief, love, and vulnerability through warm melodies and heartfelt lyrics. 

Sabree hopes her work inspires people to believe in themselves. “I think what I want people to feel is the strength that’s within them,” she says. “Continue to have faith.”

Her work, like the exhibit itself, exists in that in-between space: In the questions we ask when we walk through it, how we hold both sorrow and possibility in the same breath.

Through visuals, sound, and writing, The Potential Project becomes more than an art installation. It becomes a mirror for the city’s grief and a gesture of love back to it. With artists like Bentrice Jusu, Hana Sabree, Umar Alim (Big Ooh), Jennet Jusu, Raven George, Aslin Laureano, Terra Applegate, and Dean “RAS” Innocenzi, at its core, the project doesn’t just preserve memory. It transforms it. And it reminds us that healing isn’t about forgetting.

The Potential Project doesn’t shy away from the hardest parts of grief. It asks viewers to confront what we lose when a life is taken. That’s what The Potential Project ultimately offers: Not just remembrance, but space. A space for mourning, imagination, and art. A place for holding up the lives lost to violence not only as tragedies, but as reminders of what could have been, what still can be, and the potential in ourselves if we choose to see it.

Honoring Lives through The Potential Project

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By Kateryna S.

Historically, art has often served as a way to portray the personal experience of the artist or the struggle of a community, whether it’s poetry, music or painting. Art is a reflection of the artist’s mind, their values in society, and their sense of the things that require more attention from the public. For Bentrice Jusu, it is about telling the stories of people whose voices would not otherwise be heard — a serious responsibility she took on when starting the Potential Project, which focuses on remembering homicide victims in Trenton, New Jersey, through the eyes of their loved ones using visual art and photography.

In 2016, Jusu stood close to death as she watched 49 people get killed by a gunman in one of Orlando’s nightclubs. Three months after the incident, Jusu lost one of her students who never had a chance to finish his artwork, leaving a big mark on her heart. Those losses led to something bigger, something that connects hundreds of experiences. As part of the Potential Project, Jusu will place yellow squares in significant locations around the city and passersby will be able to see photos and information about the people who are being honored. 

Born and raised in Trenton, Jusu is not only an artist, but also a firefighter, a teacher, a rapper, and a poet. There are many aspects to her talent. I visited one of her main studios where most of the artwork is displayed, which felt like being inside her mind. Unfinished projects, paint, “creative mess,” pictures and music revealed Jusu to be a unique individual from the very first moments. Her love of drawing came from her father who laid the foundation, leading Jusu to where she is today. Jusu is also inspired by many artists and singers, including Carrie Mae Weems, who is a well-known photographer. Through her work, Jusu portrays the experiences of people and engages the local youth, encouraging their talents and potential. 

Using her skills and experience, Jusu raises awareness of important issues and tells the stories of people with very different perspectives. In a small city like Trenton, where everyone is connected, the problem of gun violence became a trauma in a community. In 2021 alone, 21 people were killed in Jusu’s hometown. This is not an uncommon occurrence; gun violence has become normalised across the United States because it became very usual to see homicide happen at schools, nightclubs and other public places. 

In her studio, Jusu cooperates with other artists to interview the families and friends of people who were murdered. As a founder of the Potential Project, Jusu faced the most daunting pushback — from herself. “I was scared,” she says. “’Cause who am I to take these pictures, take these images, and then, you know, illustrate it and then introduce it to people?” Because the project touches on such a sensitive topic and tells the stories of people who were unfortunate enough to lose their lives — people who had so many dreams, potential, and talent — Jusu finds it very difficult mentally. 

Being able to see behind the scenes of the project left me with a lot of emotions and feelings. Each story is unique and different; each individual had something to bring to this world. While the Potential Project’s purpose is to bring attention to the issue and honor the people who died from homicide, putting an end to gun violence is not the responsibility of the artists who engage in the project. One of the participating artists, Hana Sabree, who is also a singer and a close friend of Jusu’s, shared her thoughts about the project and Jusu’s work. “I don’t think it’s Bentrice’s responsibility to bring hope to the city, especially now,” she says. ”Because it could, it continued to happen.” 

In order for art to express the voices of people, their feelings and struggles, it’s extremely important to show the community from a more intimate perspective. Jusu is one of the artists who brings up an important conversation that is often silenced in society. Art connects people in a lot of ways, but each piece is outlining difficulties, hopes and changes. “Mass media does a great job creating films,” she says. “Art work creates a more intimate conversation.” In a small city like Trenton, everybody can see their friend, neighbor, classmate, coworker, or relative in the project. It is not about personal benefit; it is about feeling the need to share the experience and bring the community together.

The Humor of Being Forgotten: Daniel Robbins’s “Bad Shabbos” Neglects The Middle Child 

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By Clara T.

At threaded fingers comes the daybreak of David and Meg’s relationship, grasping each other in hope for an easy dinner when their Jewish and Catholic families collide at last—a prayer for the journey ahead. Scenes apart, the introduction of Abby and Benjamin is not as ginger. She urges him to go inside her parents’ apartment, becoming cordless when he distances himself for a smoke. Abby—the middle child in the family—is never given a fair shake in Daniel Robbins’s film Bad Shabbos. She is caught in the push and pull, never finding true support.

Daniel Robbins, a director known for the horror films Pledge and Uncaged, seems to be pivoting away from his usual terrain with Bad Shabbos, which partly opens in appearance as a Hallmark-esque film about a family gathering for a warm holiday dinner. Yet something is clearly off. Framed as an interreligious parable, Bad Shabbos attempts to say that familial strife can be resolved in the face of sin—even murder. Although Robbins blatantly implies there will be no “good shabbos” in this story, could it be too much to ask for good direction?

While Robbins presumably set out to make a Hanukkah family movie, it is in fact a murder comedy—one floating with offensiveness and thoughtlessness. Here, the tension is meant to lie between matriarch Ellen (Kyra Sedgwick), who sweetly condescends that Judaism is “a household plant” passed down through generations of women, and almost-daughter-in-law and laborious convert Meg, whose efforts to swing from the Catholicism she was raised with to her fiancé’s religion, Judaism, are likened to taking “online courses in gardening.” They interact as foils in symmetrical frames that capture the generational gap dilemma in religious communities—centered the way Wes Anderson might.

By contrast, the woman in this hereditary line—Ellen’s daughter Abby (Milana Vayntrub)—is largely neglected. Robbins overlooks the actual strain between mother and daughter, even though Abby is the girlfriend of the murdered man who cheated on her. While Abby’s older brother David, her younger brother Adam (Theo Taplitz), and her father Richard (David Paymer) grieve with her following the death, Robbins falls into the stereotype of ignoring the middle child.

Abby is the true compass of the Bad Shabbos ensemble, even when Robbins makes heroes of everyone but her. Robbins turns the doorman Jordan (Method Man) into the concluding savior when he impersonates Abby’s dead boyfriend at the dinner table to avert suspicion—kissing Abby to increase believability, without her consent. One of the few tender moments is when Abby, wordless, conveys her sorrow, revealing she had known her boyfriend was cheating all along. That is the singular mystery revealed—if anyone came in expecting a murder mystery.

The family members are all losers in the end, but at least they are closer to one another—except Abby. While David supports Meg, Meg struggles for Ellen, Jordan aids David and Richard, and Richard and Ellen baby Adam—what kind of support is it if it takes a murder to realize Abby’s suffering?

Robbins’s rise in the comedy genre is positioned as a Messianic Age or a Second Coming of a directorial debut—but it is everything but. Much like Bad Shabbos unites everyone but Abby.

Is philosophy dead?

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Credit K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
K. Mitch Hodge

By Stephanie Garcia

Bronx, N.Y.

It is human nature to question what is around us. In the ancient world, questioning and seeking answers to life’s mysteries was met with mixed opinions. Nonetheless, the contributions of these philosophers are valuable to our contemporary society. They ultimately paved the way for intellectual curiosity.

The question now is whether the study of philosophy is still relevant in our science-based society. Today, philosophy may not be as highly valued as science, but does that mean it should die off?

“It’s still relevant,” said Daniel Dorsey, a philosophy enthusiast from New York City. “But it’s slowly dying because some people aren’t using their brains to question the world around them — something that is necessary for philosophy.” He believes that philosophy is still relevant in our personal lives rather than in society more generally.

Teniesea Russell from New York City is a college advisor who chooses to live by a wide range of her own personal philosophies. Her beliefs regarding the subject differ from Dorsey’s. She believes that she and many others use philosophy on a daily basis and that it cannot easily die off because of its relevance to our lives.

Russell

Teniesea Russell

Russell elaborated: “Some individuals like referring back to historically popular statements conveyed by philosophers concerning morals or virtues such as ‘patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,’ which derives from a philosophical notion. We still talk about philosophers like Aristotle and sometimes apply their ways of thinking in our society or lives.”

While some people, like Dorsey, argue that philosophy is at risk of dying, there are others who say that it is already dead. In an interview from 2011, Stephen Hawking claimed that philosophy is dead because of its inability to catch up with science, which Hawking called “the torch for discovery.” However, he then went on to say that while philosophy may no longer be able to discover anything new, “it is still relevant in people’s day-to-day lives.”

Hawking’s claims about philosophy’s contemporary significance seem to contradict one another, but they do raise a question: Has science replaced philosophy? Both fields push us to question our world, yet science focuses more on actually finding answers.

Dorsey emphasized that in order to progress, it is important to “question why things exist, like a philosopher, and then find answers to anything and everything that can be answered, much like scientists do.” He concluded, “in order to progress, both must coexist.”

Russell believes in the application of philosophy to science, particularly when developing sentient technologies such as artificial intelligence. “I believe we still need both because they provide different aspects of thinking,” she explained. “By having philosophical thoughts, we can continue to use science to get into the microscopic details surrounding these thoughts, which can pave the way for more scientific achievements.”

It is likely that philosophy will always be a part of society due to our natural curiosity. Science relies on philosophy to provide some of the ethics surrounding our new scientific endeavors and it is likely that philosophy will transcend into a new field of study: one vital to the ethics behind scientific progression and societal life. As long as these questions are asked and explored, philosophy may never truly die.

How Racism Leads To Anime’s Stigma

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photo-1581833971358-2c8b550f87b3Credit: Tim Mossholder

By Crystyna Barnes

Elm City, N.C.

Have you ever heard of anime?” asked a student at the front of the class. My teacher looked at the kid, confused. “It’s like those weird cartoons from Japan or something,” the student added. “Don’t watch them. They’re really gross and weird.”

The students, and even the teacher himself, laughed. I sat in the back of the class beside my friend, a fellow fan of anime. We slowly turned to look at each other, puzzled. The last anime I’d watched was about a middle school boy rediscovering his love for piano. What’s so gross about that?

Cartoons are a staple of most childhoods. No one bats an eye when asked about their favorite Disney film. Why is it any different when the content originates in a foreign country? The watered-down reasoning is that it’s simply racism. But the bigger culprit is social conditioning that teaches us to think of something outside of the norm as “weird.”

What people don’t know is that they’ve probably already consumed western content inspired by anime. Ever watch “Avatar: The Last Airbender”? “Powerpuff Girls”? “Teen Titans”? All of these childhood favorites took notes from anime: exaggerated facial expressions, big eyes and mouths, and a color- ful palette for character designs. We’ve been enjoying cartoons based on anime all along.

Whenever I’ve asked someone why they don’t like anime, the answer is short: “It’s weird” or “I just don’t get it.” I have even heard people say that anime all seem per- verted. I don’t necessarily believe that the average person who says these things is outright racist, but continued anti-Asian stigma and a lack of edu- cation contribute to this pointless opposition. If all someone hears about anime is that it’s strange and distasteful, a cycle of indoctrination has been created where no one questions or denies this out of fear of being viewed as weird as well.

In the scheme of things, the only noticeable difference between the cartoons we know and love and anime is the place of origin. Anime is not just one genre or one style. Just like cartoons, there is one out there for everyone.

If we want to end the stereotypes around Asian culture, change starts with the individual. Go on Netflix, find an anime with a plot that piques your interest, and start watching it. Suggest it to friends. Normalizing content that is viewed as abnormal will only create more open-minded people and more shows and movies to enjoy.

‘BlacKkKlansman’ reinforces unfortunate stereotypes

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By Auhjanae McGee

Detroit, MI

In his work, Spike Lee, an African American filmmaker, tries to straddle the line between accurately portraying the black experience and making those experiences palatable for a larger audience. His most recent film, ‘BlacKkKlansman,’ skillfully does both, hitting the viewer over the head with symbolism and real-world allusion to blackness while also appealing to a demographically diverse group of people.

‘BlacKkKlansman’ has an interesting and unique premise: A black detective in 1970s Colorado goes undercover with the help of his white partner to expose potential dangers in a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. John David Washington, the actor who portrays Ron Stallworth, also known as the Black Klansman, calls his local chapter of the Klan and uses his “white voice” to pretend to be a racist white man in order to set up an undercover investigation to expose the wrongdoings of the organization. While the film expertly grapples with ideas of black assimilation in a white America, it is also littered with problematic black stereotypes.

The most prominent issue of ‘BlacKkKlansman’ is the reinforcement of stereotypes that contribute to the exploitation of African Americans in film. The idea that certain races speak in particular dialects and that “white” dialects are the most acceptable permeates throughout the entire film. One could argue that Stallworth pretending to be white over the phone is crucial for him to have gotten his foot in the door with the KKK. But by the ending, when he reveals his “black voice,” it’s clear that his eloquence and diction are supposed to be seen as an act—a white act.

Furthermore, Patrice, a black female activist and president of the Black Student Union at a local college, is an exceptionally flat and static character. Her only role is to stand for “black power” and oppose the police force, perpetuating yet another stereotype: that black people hate all cops. Lee’s exploitation of these assumptions is harmful to black people who see their race being reduced to overly-defined clichés, and simultaneously beneficial to white people who can feel comfortable hanging on to potentially problematic views they may have on the black race.

‘BlacKkKlansman’ does make the effort to depict Stallworth as a sort of mediator between two polarized sides. While that’s much needed in our current political climate, the effort could have been stronger. And the underlying issues hold this film back from realizing the type of true-to-life nuance that other movies that deal with the black identity in America — like Get Out — achieve.

Although Lee is an African American who can be said to be “of the culture,” he does not have a free pass to exploit the black characters whose stories he chooses to represent. The film is great for patronizing white liberals who want to champion the defeat of horrible racists at the hands of people of color. But if black audiences expect to see the trials and dynamics of being an African American cop undercover as a Klansman, they will be sorely disappointed.