RedLine has entered the final days of our 2021-2022 exhibition program, Afrofuturism + Beyond.

Every year, RedLine hosts exhibitions that fall under a specific social justice-centered theme. These themes are introduced during our annual arts and culture summit, 48 Hours. (Get a sneak peek at our 2022-2023 theme, Roots Radical!)

While wrapping up Afrofuturism + Beyond is bittersweet, we still have two incredible upcoming exhibitions as our grand finale: Floyd D. Tunson’s Ascent and the Black Power Tarot exhibitions. Ascent is presented in collaboration with our friends at The Arvada Center.

The curator for both of these shows is Daisy McGowan, award-winning arts administrator, art curator and community activator. Since 2010, McGowan has served as the Director & Chief Curator for the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Gallery of Contemporary Art.

McGowan has independently and collaboratively curated and produced over 95 exhibitions for various art institutes, including RedLine.

We recently sat down with McGowan to learn more about the fascinating inspiration and history behind these exhibitions — and to get exclusive behind-the-scenes details about what you can look forward to experiencing when you visit the exhibitions!

What’s the story behind your involvement with The Black Power Tarot and Ascent? How did you come to be curator of these shows? 

In 2016, Arish Ahmad Khan (aka King Khan) approached me about helping him find a gallery or museum to produce an exhibition idea that had come to him in a dream. 

Arish had just finished creating the musical score for a documentary film “The Invaders” that told the powerful story of a black power community group in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1960s. He was also practicing tarot, studying and heavily influenced by his mentor Alejandro Jodorowsky.

The idea for a Black Power Tarot deck came to him in a dream fully formed, and he worked to produce it with the artist for Game of Thrones, Michael James Eaton. He felt strongly that the next step was to produce the cards at maximal scale, to put them together in a gallery or museum space with the film and the soundtrack also featured, and to tour this project as far and wide as possible. 

I found funding and produced the first exhibition at UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art’s downtown site in January, 2017. Since then, it has traveled nationally and internationally, and now will travel to RedLine in 2022.

A serendipitous meeting with Floyd D. Tunson, Khan, and visiting Civil Rights legend and founding Invaders member John B. Smith lead towards the future exhibition proposal to RedLine. 

During a studio visit in 2017, we all explored and discussed themes of Afrofuturism, the Black Power movement history and future, and mutual interests and connections.

The plan for a dual exhibition proposal was formed at that point, with an undetermined future date. I started formulating the idea for a solo exhibition by Tunson as the inaugural exhibition for our new gallery site at the Ent Center for the Arts, which opened in January of 2018. 

It was important to me that Floyd would open our new space, to highlight his importance to our region and his important place in the state’s art landscape. 

Soon after that exhibition, I proposed to RedLine to travel the two exhibitions to RedLine and with that, to expand significantly the scope of work in Floyd D. Tunson’s exhibition in a way that that particular gallery space can accommodate. 

This was very important as well, because Floyd grew up in and had significant formative experiences in the Five Points area that surrounds RedLine. I felt that he wasn’t as known or celebrated statewide as he should be, having spent the past four decades in Manitou Springs, just west of Colorado Springs, devoted to his art practice and teaching throughout that time. 

While he is represented by Michael Warren Gallery in Denver and known to many already, the chance to amplify his work in conversation with the Black Power Tarot exhibition in RedLine’s Project Space felt like an opportunity to bring a whole new level of attention to his work with this survey exhibition.

What is your personal relationship to the content of the work? Why and how did these exhibitions draw you in?

The way that Arish subverted and flipped the long and mostly white European tradition of Tarot was particularly captivating.

The project features 36 individuals from civil rights, pop culture and music history, offering multiple points of entry for the public — pop culture, rock and roll, civil rights history, and the deeper history and mysticism of tarot. 

It seemed like such a fascinating project, I was honored to produce it and work with Arish to travel it. It turned out to be one of our most attended exhibitions, was featured in national syndication on PBS, and had a range of national publications highlight the project, so overall a success.

As the director and chief curator for the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art, my curatorial practice is particularly focused on bringing projects to reality in collaboration with artists. 

In the case of the Black Power Tarot project, I asked the artist for his vision, raised the funds to help produce all the physical aspects of the exhibition, and have helped organize the project traveling to other venues over the past years since it premiered with us.

Why are the exhibitions Ascent and The Black Power Tarot so important right now?

In the case of Floyd D. Tunson’s survey exhibition, which has expanded due to pandemic timing to take place across both RedLine and the Arvada Center for the Arts & Humanities this June, I feel just as strongly as when I originated the exhibition in my gallery at the Ent Center for the Arts in 2018 that Floyd’s work deserves a wider audience and all the accolades it can get. 

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College will during the same time frame exhibit a significant work of Tunson’s that is in their collection, as well as premiere a multi-media project “The Endangered'' that the artist is producing with some amazing musicians. 

Floyd is one of Colorado’s most important living artists and I’m excited to connect more people to his work through what we are now calling the “Tunson Takeover” of the Front Range region.

The connections between RedLine’s Afrofuturism + Beyond exhibition program, the Black Power Tarot and Floyd D. Tunson: Ascent are rich with possibilities for learning, for understanding more of our collective history and for visioning the future with artists in the central role of that process.

It’s also exciting that all of the artists and civil rights legend, John B. Smith, will be on site during the opening events with additional programming in the planning for the opening weekend.

What has been the most challenging element of curating these shows? What has been the most rewarding part? 

The pandemic (of course)! Delays/closures have meant multiple years now of being flexible, making plans only to have them changed again, trying to balance safety with moving forward with plans to bring these exhibitions to reality.

But where we have ended up with this now being a multi-site program with the Arvada Center, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and RedLine involved as well as a catalog publication for Tunson’s exhibitions is terrific. 

The most rewarding part is coming up in the next couple months – getting the art up in the spaces, working with the artists and RedLine’s wonderful staff on realizing these ambitious exhibitions, and inviting the public in to experience it all and hear from the artists and curators.  

I have especially enjoyed working collaboratively with the artists, curators, and staff — Collin Parson and Emily King with Arvada Center, Louise Martorano and Whit Sibley at RedLine, and Michael Christiano at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at C.C., and Floyd’s longtime manager Wylene Carol. 

We’re all passionate about giving these exhibitions the most robust support and platform possible, and it’s a deep honor to work with everyone to realize it all. It’s pretty dreamy after two years of delays to see it on the not-too-distant horizon — huzzah! 

Can you talk about how The Black Power Tarot fits in with the other concurrent exhibition you're curating at RedLine - Floyd D. Tunson's Ascent?

The exhibitions were planned from the beginning to complement each other, and I left open some space for a collaboration between Floyd, Arish, and John B. Smith, should that have come to fruition. 

The pandemic made that all more challenging, but I expect the conversations between the artists at planned public events will be as rich as that first meeting in Floyd’s Manitou Springs studio in 2016. 

The dialogue then was so inspiring to me as a curator that I thought if we could take it to a more public level, the exhibitions would offer fascinating intersections for the public. 

Pop culture, civil rights history, and Afrofuturistic themes of looking at the past, present and future and imagining a world that moves away from violent oppression of Black communities through the lens of art, music, literature, and technology are all there.

Both Ascent and The Black Power Tarot are the final exhibitions in RedLine's annual exhibition theme Afrofuturism + Beyond. What is compelling to you about this theme as a curator?

When I proposed the exhibitions to RedLine in 2019, I wasn’t aware of the theme that was being planned. But of course both Floyd D. Tunson: Ascent and the Black Power Tarot are a powerful fit for a powerful theme. 

Afrofuturism and the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s have much cross-over: at the core of both is betterment of our society for Black communities, and thus by extension, all of us. 

The Black Power Tarot features screening of a critically important film celebrating the Invaders, a black power group based in Memphis, Tennessee, that were the last folks to meet with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., before he was tragically and horrifically assassinated.

John B. Smith is a living civil rights legend and the chance to hear from him in the setting of the exhibitions will offer powerful learning opportunities for the community. 

With RedLine’s geographic location in a historic Black neighborhood of Five Points in Denver and Floyd’s personal and familial history in the same neighborhood, I was especially excited to travel and expand upon his exhibition at the Ent Center for the Arts, with RedLine’s involvement. 

The theme is incredibly compelling as the Afrofuturism theory offers a utopian view of the future that is grounded in the Black experience and push for equality, highlighting blind spots in the status quo that other utopian movements miss and offering a vision that we can all get behind.

Experience Ascent and the Black Power Tarot Exhibitions at RedLine

While we’re sad to say goodbye to our Afrofuturism + Beyond exhibition program, we can’t wait for you to experience these powerful and poignant exhibitions.

Floyd D. Tunson’s Ascent and the Black Power Tarot will be on display at RedLine from June 10-July 31st.

Learn more about our upcoming exhibitions >