Afrofuturism comes to Garfield through public artwork

Born Shamir Walters has spent years teaching the concept of Afrofuturism to kids. The Pittsburgh artist painted an Octavia Butler mural with students at Garfield Gardens and helped lead Afrofuturism-themed programming through the Assemble community arts hub. Walters’ newest project, Everyday Afrofuturism , is the result of a years-long collaboration with Assemble and BOOM Concepts . The interactive sculpture, which debuted during the June Unblurred First Friday art crawl on Penn Avenue, occupies a hillside lot at the corner of North Winebiddle Street and Kincaid Street in Garfield. The kinetic installation invites visitors to rotate panels featuring Butler, and jazz musicians, Alice Coltrane and Herbie Hancock, three cultural figures whose work expanded ideas about Black creativity, innovation, and possibility. Yet Walters is reluctant to place himself neatly inside any single category. “I consider myself a futurist with no Afro,” Walters quips during an interview with Pittsburgh City Paper . While Walters draws heavily from Black cultural history and Afrofuturist ideas, he explains that his personal ancestry includes Cherokee, Seminole, and Choctaw roots alongside generations of American family history. Assemble founder Nina Barbuto tells City Paper that the work grew out of educational programming that predates the sculpture by years. Assemble has long used Afrofuturism as a framework for STEAM education, introducing students to artists, writers, inventors, and thinkers whose contributions are often missing from conventional narratives about technology and progress. “Afrofuturism is a way of looking into the future while centering the art and experiences of African artists and folks from the African diaspora,” Barbuto says. “When we’re projecting the future, we’re making sure we’re not just seeing white people in that future.” At Assemble, those ideas are translated into practi