Tyiesha Radford Shorts has begun to prepare for her future artist-in-residency stint at Urban Arts Space by looking to the past.

An educator, writer and multidisciplinary artist, Shorts has in recent months focused her attentions on Black Ohio history, and more specifically the years that stretched between the state’s 1803 founding and the Reconstruction era that followed in the wake of the Civil War. “I was really thinking of my own experience having grown up in Ohio and not having known much of the history that I now know, such as the Black state representatives and the work they did to undo the Black Codes,” said Shorts, referencing the laws enacted in Southern states in the aftermath of the Civil War and meant to restrict the movements of formerly enslaved people. “And then I’m looking at Black settlement, considering the history of the Ohio River as the site of liberation even before Juneteenth. And I was just thinking, like, why isn’t anyone showing and teaching this history? Why isn’t it common knowledge? And so, I really wanted this residency to be an opportunity … for me to unearth that for folks. It’s kind of an excavation of that history that isn’t always available.”

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