Many Faces: Alexis Rogers

Our Many Faces, One Collective series continues, this month highlighting Alexis Roger, written by Marlene Paul

The gold “A” Alexis Rogers wears around her neck could also stand for artist or activist. Throughout her life those identities have intertwined in ways both intentional and unconscious. Now they’re intersecting in a research project and exhibition culminating four years as a University of Richmond student and Bonner Scholar interning at ART 180.

The Capital of the Confederacy plays a central role in her story.

As a high school senior exploring colleges in 2020, Alexis attended a lot of Zoom orientations. “Richmond was the only one giving in-person tours,” she says. That visit stoked her interest in activism and curiosity around the memorialization of history. Confederate monuments were starting to come down, and she noticed Black student activism on campus that mirrored her own outspokenness.

On the tour she saw “spray paint everywhere and remnants of the student protests. I feel like traditionally that would scare Black students away, like…’I don’t know if I want to be at a school with such public issues.’ And I was like, oh I’d be great here. This is the place that I need to be.”

She was inspired by the activism and the unity the Black community on campus seemed to have. A movement to rename buildings was underway. “It’s a different beast taking on your university. The fact that the students fought so hard and won, and I was there my freshman year to see the names get taken down, made me feel like I made the right choice.” 

The city itself played a role in her decision to attend UR, reminding her of an indelible moment in middle school when a girl put a Confederate flag in her locker. She didn’t know what it meant.

“I remember looking it up and learning about Richmond’s ties to the Confederacy, and it stuck with me.” She researched the city further while considering UR and learned about the monuments, the Black History Museum, the public art. “I just felt like there was an interesting dynamic happening in the city that attracted me to come.” She began wondering about the different narratives and “if they could live together harmoniously.”

That middle school incident catalyzed her activism. She created a slideshow to persuade her parents she needed to transfer, and by the next year she attended a Quaker school. It was “super small but very diverse,” and she met some of her best friends. “They were beautiful Black girls. They were socializing me in a different way. And I learned about Quakerism and caring about other people and empathy.”

“It was even reflected in my art. I didn’t see myself as beautiful or worthy and I was always drawing white people, white women in particular, because that’s who I was told was beautiful. And then seventh grade is when you see my art start to switch a little bit and you see different skin tones, you see more Blackness reflected.”

She was recruited to a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania, where “the flip really switched” her freshman year. She learned about social activism in a class called Peace and Justice and describes her high school self as “a very loud activist. If you could imagine a social justice warrior that was always on 10, that was definitely me.”

She was also student body president. “I was working with all these different people, and it never felt like there was a weird power dynamic. It always felt like it was equal.”

Encouraged by her mother to apply for the UR Bonner Scholars Program, Alexis “saw that it said community activism and community service and I was like, ‘oh I do that.’” Scholars intern for 10 hours a week throughout college.

She’s grateful she decided to apply and believes “I would not be nearly as entrenched in the community had I not been a Bonner scholar.” She wanted to intern at an arts organization that would mesh with her passions but couldn’t find one on the list of options. After a Google search led her to ART 180, she got her advisor’s approval to reach out and ultimately convinced the staff to make space for her.

“ART 180 has become such an integral and vital part of my college experience. I didn’t feel like my Richmond journey started until I started working at ART 180,” she says. Digging through archives for our 25th anniversary last year and seeing “these different initiatives to connect art and youth to the history of Richmond really inspired me to try to do that and reflect that in my own research.”

With an expanding network, Alexis feels “super connected to the city and it solidifies it as a home away from home. That kind of community inspires my work and continues to heal that inner child from elementary school that didn’t see the beauty in herself. Now I not only see the beauty in myself but...in my community, because my community looks like me.”

For Alexis, ART 180 has been “such a healing place.” She sees visitors experience the same thing. “They’ll see the ambience of the gallery and be like, ‘Wow, this is such a nice space.’ It’s such a homey space. I think there’s just an energy to it.”

“Once I got a key—a key to the city—I was in here all the time just painting. It became a catalyst for my creativity when it felt stifled on campus. Just being in Jackson Ward, being in downtown Richmond, there’s energy…that helps with that creative process.”

She especially appreciates “the community connections that I’ve gained,” including to Ron Stokes of The Art Seen, which elevates minority artists. Alexis was their first artist in residency in 2023, accessing opportunities to sell her work as well as meeting with artists and gallerists.

Engaging with artists of color has transformed her art and her confidence. “Being surrounded by so many dope Black artists has been super healing. They taught me not to doubt myself. When I had lunches with these different artists and I was like, ‘I’m an emerging artist, I’m not sure if I can do that’ they’re like, ‘oh no, you’re an artist, you’ve emerged, you can do it.’”

Her art, curiosity, and interest in history are coming together in a thought-provoking way. Now a senior majoring in Sociology and minoring in Africana Studies, she left on July 7 to study abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, choosing the city before knowing ART 180’s first artist in residence, Xolani Sivunda, would be coming from there.

“Being in Richmond really piqued my interest in public memory and commemorative justice,” which she defines as “centering diverse narratives in public spaces,” and countering dominant narratives “with more truth telling.” She cites two examples locally: the Emancipation and Freedom Monument on Brown’s Island, and Kehinde Wiley's Rumors of War at VMFA.

“I’m excited about that conversation happening in Richmond,” and she’s eager to learn more. Visiting Berlin in 2022, also through UR, she saw many examples of commemorative justice regarding the Holocaust.

Although she never studied Apartheid in school, “the more I read about what people in Cape Town are doing to…reconcile that kind of history made me more interested in…seeing how we can incorporate those themes and approaches over here,” she says.

Her research, which is outside her university course work, is funded by a UR grant and originally centered around Richmond and Montgomery, Alabama,—which “is doing a much better job at commemorating their history than we are.” When a research trip to Alabama fell through, she “shifted the focus to a transnational kind of comparative analysis.”

“The point of the research is to talk to what I’m calling ‘artivists’—artists and activists.” She’s interested in what inspires them to create, and what draws them to do public work.

“I want to shed a light on Richmond art, too.” She points to the Reconciliation Memorial in Shockoe Bottom. “It’s not hidden but it’s not nearly as visible as Monument Avenue or these huge museums.”

“I took a class that inspired the research of memorialization in Richmond and they were talking about the United Daughters of Confederacy and how much financial support they received from residents and the government…to commemorate a Lost Cause ideology.” She wondered, “What are other people doing to counter those narratives?”

Alexis will continue that research in Cape Town. She plans to meet with South African artists and to collaborate with Xolani, comparing his experience here with hers there. All this connects to her family’s history and a deeper tie to Richmond. Two years ago, her family found a document proving her ancestors were enslaved here. That discovery changed her.

“It was just like an additional layer of power that has been healing for me and influenced my art. I’ve always suspected that there’s been enslavement, of course, in my family lineage, but it’s just very visceral to see it on paper, to know that I’m a product of survival and resistance. It’s really crazy to think about, like you’re literally your ancestors’ wildest dreams. They couldn’t have imagined you going to college pursuing an education, making art, connecting with the community, trying to push forth narratives to honor them. Now going to Africa on this school’s dime.“

“It’s kind of mind blowing. I guess it’s the reversal of their journey…now I’m going from Richmond to Africa. And the fact that it’s with the support of the school which has also enslaved people, it’s just a lot to try to wrap my mind around.”

“Not everybody’s able to experience this. And it makes me feel very privileged to be able to be in this position.”

Preparing for the spring exhibition that will link four years in Richmond and her research “is going to be the most emotionally driven process that I’ve ever done,” she says, “reflecting on family legacy, legacy of Richmond, legacy of Cape Town. I’m super excited but definitely preparing mentally, emotionally, spiritually.”

The emotion in her art has also deepened. “My art has always been about emotions, and I think that as Black women, we’re not always entitled to our emotions. And then we’re not able to feel vulnerable or soft because we’re supposed to be strong Black women. I think my art is intended to push back against those narratives and celebrate Black women’s beauty. And also my own.”

Her paintings are now all self-portraits, which are “not meant to just reflect me, but…all Black women who’ve ever felt less than or ugly. And to be able to see themselves in my work and celebrating Black womanhood and Black culture.”

“I love seeing how my art has evolved from not reflecting myself in Blackness to only reflecting myself and only reflecting Blackness and Black culture.” She describes the latest piece she completed which took months. “It stressed me out so bad I didn’t even want to go to the opening!” Entitled Through the Motions, the piece sold to Hamilton Glass before she got there.

“It’s about different emotions that Black women have and just being able to swim through it. Don’t drown in your emotions, but you’re entitled to swim through it just the same as everybody else.”

She considers what her art means to viewers who look like her and remembers the young Black girls who saw her work at the gallery and asked her about it. “That was just a full circle moment for me.”

She ties that to her ART 180 internship. After working behind the scenes, she was nervous to connect with youth. “Once I started to do it, it just felt very organic. Now I have these close relationships.”

Last summer she worked with the Atlas Summer Residency and chaperoned their camping trip to Shenandoah National Park (where the current cohort is now). Their growth through the residency inspired her, and they also connected as artists. “I was painting with them and we’re all giving each other advice and critique and all that. And it was just amazing to see how motivated and creative these young people are, and how they have things that they can learn from me but I definitely have things that I can learn from them.”

A year later, she still has those relationships.

“These kids are amazing. These people are amazing. And one thing that I’ve always wanted to do for younger Black girls in particular is help them skip the step that I had to go through of not seeing yourself as worthy and like seeing yourself reflected in your art.”

“I get to connect with people who look like me, who have the same experiences, the same difficulties that they’re having and share my experience with them. It’s just been very rewarding and very healing for me.”

After five months in Cape Town, Alexis will return for her final semester and potentially her final months in Richmond. There’s no doubt her journey of inquiry, activism, and healing will follow her, and her art, wherever she goes.