“I’m excited to expand Brother Don’t Sing through sustained engagement with Tulsa—its histories, its silences, and the everyday lives shaped by them. Inspired by Ralph Ellison and his novel Invisible Man, my work approaches landscape as a vessel for memory, holding what has been buried, denied, or left unnamed. I’m especially excited to work in conversation with the community, developing relationships over time and allowing those exchanges to shape the work. This fellowship offers the time and stability to move with care and intention, opening space for a more expansive and sustainable practice grounded in research, teaching, and collaboration.”
PHOTOGRAPHY, EXPERIMENTAL FILM
AMIR SAADIQ
Amir Saadiq is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, film, and installation. His research-driven practice examines Black life, memory, and the afterlives of historical violence, often using landscape and absence to question how visibility and subjectivity are constructed under conditions of erasure. Grounded in critical fabulation and Black studies, his work situates personal reflection within broader historical and cultural frameworks.
Saadiq’s ongoing project Brother Don’t Sing is a multidisciplinary body of work that combines self-portraiture, moving image, and installation. Drawing inspiration from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the project explores the tension between presence and disappearance through indirect representations of the body. Brother Don’t Sing examines nonlinear temporality and how memory is shaped by silence, displacement, and return.
Saadiq holds an MFA from the University of California, San Diego, a BA from Howard University, and is an alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He is a recipient of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, where he continues to develop Brother Don’t Sing through sustained, place-based research. Alongside his studio practice, Saadiq is an educator whose teaching extends his commitment to critical inquiry, reflection, and storytelling.
