Youth will embark on a creative journey into the filmmaking process behind Juneteenth Reckoning with Slavery: The Making of America through participation in four Art Innovation Lab sessions. These labs explore how Enlightenment-era art and science helped shape the ideologies that justified slavery, land seizure, and the forced removal of Indigenous peoples.

Over the course of six weeks, youth participants will develop and manifest their own allegories of the world they want to see, using visual storytelling, art, and film as tools of inquiry and imagination. Their works will culminate in a public exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art on June 28, the official premiere date of Juneteenth Reckoning with Slavery: The Making of America, presented in partnership with the Minnesota Humanities Center.

To ground their work in historical context, participants will learn art ideation, meditation and will immerse themselves into the creation of their allegory through sketching and storytelling. examine stories from the art world that illuminate the hidden histories of race, labor, and artistic production.  By exploring histories of Enlightenment-era art, youth will confront the complex intersections of art, power, race, and labor—while imagining new cultural narratives that center justice, creativity, and human dignity.

Artist Bio:

Montgomery-based artist Alana Enfinity, born in San Francisco and shaped by Minnesota’s Twin Cities, creates art as a vessel for restoration—both personal and cultural. Rooted in symbolism, intention, and energy work, her creations serve as portals for healing and transformation. Every color, form, and figure in her work carries meaning, aligning energy to awaken dormant aspects of the soul.

 The intentional cuttings in her work depict the brokenness we have overcome, serving as a testament to resilience and renewal.

Drawing from diverse influences and a mastery of multiple mediums—including watercolors, clay sculpture, acrylics, photography, film, and digital art—Enfinity transforms life’s materials and cycles into transcendent narratives. The art is a declaration restoration of wholeness, and a testament to art’s power to mend, uplift, and eternally transform.