2nd Annual Youth Art Showcase

March 13 - April 19, 2026

Curatorial Statement: The second annual ARTE NOIR Youth Art Showcase exhibition: Empowering Creativity features artwork by young African and African American artists, ages 8-18, who are embarking on a path to redefine the role of young people in the Pacific Northwest.

The Central District and surrounding area are fertile ground for inspiring youth in the fine arts as a viable path to cultivating ownership, business, critical thinking, and a creative voice in their community. ARTE NOIR celebrates the creative achievements of select youth who have been learning and creating expressive compositions as extensions of academic learning, personal hobbies, or as novice professional explorations of imagination, cultural narratives, and lived experience.

ARTE NOIR is fully invested in shaping, guiding, and exploring exhibitions that offer youth a space that affirms that they are welcomed, integral, and necessary in the design of our collective Black Future. ARTE NOIR’s Youth Art Showcase empowers participants to explore an open platform of themes related to resilience, Blackness, uniqueness, culture, legacy, and mental health through painting, drawing, puppet design, show design, and digital illustration. Each composition and visual expression reveals its ideas of a future, and ism, creating a youthful form of Afro-Futurism.

The Youth Arts Showcase is about giving young people real agency to shape a personal, cultural, and professional path in the fine arts industry, not just offering them an experience to be creative, but an opportunity to encourage, empower, and celebrate before achieving the manifestations of how far they can grow.

Participating Artists: Ilyas Ceniceros, Isha Hassan, Braxton Henry, Kameirah Johnson, Tristyn Johnson, Kingston Kirkland, Norah Kirkland, Elysia McVicar, Adib Thomas, Jade Wiles, Jalen Wiles.