Black is Punk

Black is Punk is a collaborative art movement organized by UNC students through the Marcus Garvey Cultural Center with the goal of raising awareness about blackness on campus, particularly in creative spaces. The students’ projects include an art exhibit, concerts, poetry readings, movie nights and roller-skating evenings.

Nikaya Lawson and Ann Adele never felt like they had a place in this world.

They were Black and proud of it, but they loved metal and punk, not hip-hop, the kind of music and esthetic everyone associates with people like them. Even a boyfriend of Nikaya’s once told her he didn’t understand “her people’s” music. She didn’t understand it either.

Nikaya Lawson, left, and Ann Adele, right, hope to start a new artist collective based on their popular "Black is Punk" display. 

Lawson didn’t even have a close friend until she met Adele four years ago while attending the University of Northern Colorado. Now as the two prepare to graduate, they are inseparable—Adele calls Lawson “my twin from another universe”—and they want to share their experiences.

The two are art majors and they used their talents, as well as the talents of other Black artists, to answer a question: What does it mean to be Black? Their answer was a hit last fall, when their exhibit “Black is Punk” ran all semester in UNC’s Michener Library. They were amazed by how many not only showed up for the opening—more than 125—but how much the exhibit connected with both people of color and white people. It turns out a lot of people have a hard time fitting in.

“I felt like the cool kid for once,” Lawson said. Nikaya had another display in April, and Adele will premiere hers on April 20th in the Oak Room on the UNC campus. They want to keep the momentum going. They hope to start an artist collective in Greeley called Fast At Your Door. The movement is much more outward and outgoing than Lawson and Adele, who are kind and smile a lot, even though they are a bit shy—the kind of personalities wielded by nice people who haven’t felt welcomed for years. But Lawson remains thrilled at the chance to express her thoughts about her individualism.

“I exist, and that makes no sense to you, and I challenge that,” Lawson said. “I like being myself and I like bothering people. Maybe being bothered will help you learn something."