Born and raised in South Minneapolis, Daren Hill’s journey as an artist was an organic one. He recalled memories of exploring his grandfather’s dark room, an activity that would get him in deep trouble but served as a touchpoint where he could trace back his own love for photography.
He wouldn’t realize that art was his calling until moving to New York City in 2006, where he fell in love with the graffiti art scene. Hill had connected with a creative director from Source Magazine that would later lead to an opportunity for him to become a contributing writer and cover artist.
Hill would return to Minneapolis nearly a decade later to attend the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and pursue his own artistic impulses. Roughly two years later, his great uncle would bring him all of his grandfather’s old photos to sift through and organize. While Hill’s grandfather had passed away in 1998, digging through his photos would allow him to repay that spark of inspiration that led Hill to his purpose as an artist.
The thread that helps bond them
Seth Goodspeed, a Hennepin History Museum employee at the time, offered Hill access to their scanners to help preserve his grandfather’s work. Through this archival process, Hill came up with the idea to exhibit the photos he had discovered in his family’s collection. It was then he came up with the idea that would eventually become his exhibit titled, “The Bond Between Us.”
Hill’s exhibit celebrates the bond between the works of his grandfather Forest Hill and his father Gregory that tie three generations of artists. The exhibit opened last year in April, and although it was scheduled to run until this spring, it recently received an extension through the summer.
“I kind of approached it from a lens like I was like a curator,” Hill said about his approach. “I think it brought me closer to my grandfather in a way. I almost feel like he was kind of reaching out and pushing me.”
In his process to preserve the photos, Hill discovered his grandfather had snapped photos of Jesse Jackson and Angela Davis and began to understand the scope of his work. This led him to interview some of his aunts and uncles to learn more about his grandfather and his career as a photographer for several decades.
The project also allowed Hill to examine the characteristics of both his grandfather and father, who he described as men of very few words. Through this journey he remembered how his father took him to his first art museum and how Prince had gifted him his first art set as a child due to his stepmother working for him.
Artistic style and messaging
Much of Hill’s work is influenced by street art with a mixture of fine art. In pursuing an entrepreneurial degree, he had been focused on the advertising and marketing utilizations of art, but had decided to focus on developing his craft when he began to attend MCAD.
He described his work as a digital college where he takes one image and then superimposes another image on top of it once it’s scanned. Hill’s fascination with textures also shows in his artwork where he’s been able to incorporate physical materials into his creations. One of his pieces includes ripped prop money to symbolize his rejection of any notion of putting profit over artistic integrity.
“A lot of my art explores the commodification of culture and the fact that society has this want to commodify culture,” he said.
A series of 0s and 1s can be seen through Hill’s work to symbolize binary code. He stated that this is in reference to the coded knowledge and experience people have passed down to them by their ancestors embedded in their DNA. Other pieces depict individuals with crowns over their heads or the word “crown” spelled out next to them. According to Hill, this is to showcase their value as people and celebrate and uplift the contributions of Black and brown people.
Highlighting his family’s works
Hill’s exhibit is the first time both his grandfather and father have been able to have their works shown in a gallery or museum space. Though Hill’s grandfather had operated out of a studio, he never worked professionally as a photographer. Rather, he always had a camera in his hand and was able to capture photos in his travels.
It wasn’t until Hill went through this collection of photographs that he would discover that his grandfather had traveled to New York City. Part of the exhibit mixes photographs taken by Hill with the work of both his father and grandfather to blend their artistic approach.
“I got a photograph that he took in New York, so we’re kind of walking through this time and space differently, but also like exploring some of these subjects the same way,” Hill said.
The exhibit was also an important one for Hill’s extended family to attend and participate in and experience the work of an influential figure in their lives.
“We have a scrapbook where I allowed them to kind of share their thoughts about my grandfather and what he did, and that was also important for me because as much as it’s like my show, it’s all of our work,” he said.
The Bond Between Us is on view at the Hennepin History Museum, open Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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