The Dream the Dreamers Dreamed was a small but impactful exhibit. It’s so easy to overlook GalleryDAAS and I think that’s symbolic of many students with marginalized identities’ experiences on this campus. The exhibit had pieces created by Black undergrad and graduate students here at Umich which symbolized various aspects of their experiences at the university whether it be direct reflections on their time here or the way art helps them process their experiences in this space. The breadth of this theme was evident in the pieces featured in the gallery. Without reading the exhibit description, it would be easy to struggle to find a common narrative. Some pieces were paintings of beautiful scenes while other were multimedia representations of the victims of police brutality. Yet other pieces were more abstract. One piece that caught my particular attention was the Diary of a Daughter in Diaspora. It was a small book of poetry by Bayan Founas on a stand in the middle of the room. I craned my neck to catch a glimpse at the pages without touching it, and there seemed to be print on the pages. I wanted to pick it up and read it but all my instincts tell me touching something in an art gallery is the number one no-no. I probably should have just asked the woman working in the gallery if this was an interactive piece. Now I will be forever curious about the poetry inside that book. What diaspora does the author identify with? How is that represented in their work? As a student at Umich, I’ve definitely been sleeping on GalleryDAAS and I’m a little sad that, as a graduating senior, I won’t be back next Fall to see what new exhibit they have.
