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.