- [Announcer] Funding for The Art Show is made possible by: The Rockwern Charitable Foundation.

The L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation.

Montgomery County.

The Josephine S. Russell Charitable Trust.

The Virginia W. Kettering Foundation.

The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by: And viewers like you.

Thank you.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

- In this edition of The Art Show: Art between brothers.

(bright music) Promoting Native American heritage.

(bright music continues) And giving voice to New Orleans stories.

(bright music continues) (bright music ends) It's all ahead on this edition of The Art Show.

(lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music ends) Hi, I am Rodney Veal, and welcome to The Art Show, where each week we provide access to local, regional, and national artists and arts organizations.

Gift and Romain Mayambi are two brothers with day jobs and distinct creative sides.

Gift, a painter, and Romain, a photographer, have had their unique brands of artistic work spotlighted locally and nationally.

These brothers are making waves in the Cincinnati art scene and far beyond.

Take a look.

(casual music) - [Romain] My name is Romain Mayambi.

I'm a photographer.

(casual music continues) - [Gift] My name is Gift Mayambi, and I'm an artist.

(casual music continues) - [Romain] We moved from Congo, DRC, to Zambia, and then from Zambia to Zimbabwe, and then Zimbabwe to here.

So we spent a few years in those places, and eventually came here in 2014.

- When we got here, I really was looking for an outlet.

We're kind of in the house for a long time.

And so, I had no like materials to draw or do stuff, so I'd cut out like cardboards and like sketch on them.

My younger sister, actually, she got placed into art class.

And so I was trying to get into art class, but I didn't know how to.

Since I was practicing at home, I started actually sketching my math teacher, English teacher to get the art teacher's attention.

And everybody kind of made a lot of noise in the school.

And so she finally, I was in math, and she came up to me, Miss New.

She's like, "Hey, I saw your art.

It was really cool and I think you do really great in art."

And that's how I got into art.

- It was freshman year of college.

I remember being on campus.

I love people watching.

It was really exciting to see all these different people from different walks of life and like seeing like the different styles that they had.

So I'm like, "Okay, I want to be able to like freeze those moments."

And that's where I started like falling in love with the idea of like, you know, picking up a camera and walking up to strangers and asking them if I could take a photo.

It came from like the passion, so it doesn't feel like I'm forcing myself to learn these things.

YouTube university, baby.

(chuckles) I did whatever I could to like just learn as much as I can, which I'm still doing.

I don't think you ever reach a point where you're like, "I've learned it all."

(camera clicks) (casual music continues) - My nine to five, I'm an industrial designer.

- Before I got into photography, I went to school for finance, and I did a few jobs here and there.

- [Gift] Being self-taught, I think you kind of get the freedom to like explore and not have as many restrictions.

I feel like in our minds sometimes we build barriers when we know everything about something.

(camera clicks) - [Romain] The last show that we did, Heritage, was the same, where we had to like pull inspiration from like our childhood, where we grew up, and like really get to tell our story.

- [Gift] I think, in our African culture, it's like a shared culture.

Obviously, the different countries, maybe different cities, they all have their own traditions, but I think, in general, there are definitely similarities of things that we might have experienced at Zambia that somebody maybe in Botswana experienced, you know?

So, I think there's that kind of thing that connects Africa together.

And so we're trying to tap into that.

- It's like in Cincinnati, but people are like, "This doesn't feel like Cincy.

It feels, you know."

And that's the goal, right, to be able to share those stories and like inspire people who haven't either like visited Africa before, and also share the story and like the culture of like what we've experienced.

In 2025, National Geographic reaches out in wanting to feature this image.

So the mask was from Congo, but the robe that was worn is from Senegal, which my best friend is from Senegal, so I had him wear that.

And then the sandals or the babouche, that's what they call them, originated from Morocco.

So it's like just different pieces and parts.

It's funny when I tell people like, the photo from, the Nat Geo one, I was like, "Oh, I took it in Voice of America Park."

People are like, "Wait, what?"

Because people thought I went back home.

When it comes to our joint work, it's like our story, our journey.

And then when it comes to personal work, it's like trying to tell other people's stories.

A few brands that have had the opportunity to work with: Tabasco, the Cincinnati Chambers, Cincinnati Tennis, Cintrifuse, Starry.

The Athletes in Unconventional Spaces.

This one is one that I started back in 2023.

The whole series is really to speak on how we all belong in spaces, right?

Because sometimes people are like, "Oh, you don't belong here, you don't belong here."

But it's like, really breaking that barrier.

The video game series.

I grew up playing Mortal Kombat.

I grew up watching action movies.

So this series was more of like, paying homage to that.

- I think my mediums are based off of affordability.

(chuckles) I mean, I get to touch a pen every day at least.

So I use a lot of pen, Sharpies, and then I also do acrylic painting.

I kind of have a theme in my work, and it's a lot of masks.

It started from like, I think growing up in Zambia, my mom had this artist who used to come in, and he would like carve out masks in our backyard.

It's sort of like this metaphor of like the different faces people wear.

Instead of showing somebody's real face, I feel like I try to show masks to show what character that person is in that specific scenario that they're in.

I think growing up and moving around, I try to capture that not being like in one specific area, that stability of being in a specific area.

I feel like I try to tie it to like the scribble in my work.

It's like you're moving to different places, but still creating this holistic picture in a way.

It's like different routes that you take, but that creates this one unique picture.

I think we're our best hype men.

And sometimes we're like really honest and blunt about stuff.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Because I'll send him something, and then he's like, "Yeah, it's all right."

And then I'm like, "No, you can't say that."

But I feel like we also have a sense of like honesty.

I don't think we try to sugarcoat anything.

- Yeah.

- I think that kind of keeps us growing as artists.

- People always ask me too like, "Oh, like what made you move to Cincinnati?"

I'm like, it could have been anywhere else, but I think, I always say everything happens for a reason, and I think coming to Cincinnati allowed me to like pick up photography.

Because everything I know now I learned through Cincinnati, and I feel like if it was a different state, I think it would've been a different story.

(camera clicks) I think Cincinnati is known for art, right?

And I think, a little bit of our personal experience, I think it's been very helpful with kind of like seeing how the art scene is still growing and continuously hope that it can grow.

It's just really nice to feel that we're part of that growth as well.

- If you'd like to learn more this or any other story on today's show, visit us online at cetconnect.org or thinktv.org.

Ty and Masami Smith, tribally enrolled members of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon, move to Columbus in pursuit of new opportunities.

Now the couple serve as directors of the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio, where they help lead efforts to preserve and promote Native American art forms and cultures.

Ty and Masami were recently awarded the 2025 Ohio Heritage Fellowship for their multifaceted initiatives and efforts.

Let's travel to Columbus to learn more about the couple and their work.

- I'm an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon.

My husband and I are both enrolled members of that tribe, and so is our children.

We were born and raised on a reservation by our people.

His mom, she moved here.

We came to visit.

I was pregnant with our middle son, and it was a high-risk pregnancy.

We ended up staying here, thought we'd regroup for a while, and then go home.

And we've been here for 30 years.

So, that's how we ended up being in Ohio.

When we first got here, my husband was looking for a job, and he was going through the newspaper.

- Something Native American caught my eye, and I was just kind of thumbing through the pages, and I went back and I was like, "What?"

And anyway, there it was.

Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio.

- It was hard when I first came here to survive just not being with my people.

And everything that we did on the reservation and the ceremonial life and the foods that we have readily available are not here in Ohio.

I was very fortunate to have the former management in our lifetime to be here for us when we first came here.

They picked us up and brushed us off and tried to teach us how to take this as an opportunity.

As time went on, as I've grown, I realized that that might have been a saving grace for both Tyrone and I.

- [Ty] Our agency is located here on the south side of Columbus.

We just celebrated our 50th year of being in existence, 2025.

And my wife and I have the honor, responsibility of being the third set of hands to sit in as management.

It was founded back in '75 by the late Selma Walker.

Her background is Dakota, her intentions were just, you know, from the heart, sincere, and wanting to create space, you know, and essentially a home away from home for a lot of Native people here in Ohio.

- When Ty and Masami came on board, I think they just excelled in two different areas.

One is on the technical side, just doing the things you need to do to keep a nonprofit organization operational.

On the programming side, they were really instrumental in terms of my observations in promoting culture and traditional practices and providing services that the community valued.

- [Masami] We do everything here, from the cradle to the grave.

That's how my husband says it.

We have birthdays, we have funerals, we have community gatherings, we have all kinds of cultural events.

- I'm Anishinaabe Assiniboine Sioux.

I'm from the Turtle Mountain Chippewas, and also from White Bear, Canada, from my father's side.

Being military, my husband being military, everywhere that we've gone, I've always looked for a Native community to feel... I feel like I can be myself.

I've been to quite a few Native centers, and I believe Ty and Masami are offering a lot.

- [Ty] We are a very intertribal community.

- [Masami] There's been over 100 federally recognized tribes come through our doors here at NAICCO.

- [Ty] There's 574 different federally recognized tribes.

Again, in each one of them, there's their own worldview, their own creation story, language, lore, practices.

So all these variations of cultures, but you try to find those common grounds.

- [Masami] My mom taught me how to do everything, how to harvest food, how to bead, how to do applique.

So when I taught my girls how to bead and how to do different crafts, it's because that's what my mom taught me.

And I feel like our Native people, we are all very adamant about passing our gifts down to generations beneath us, because someday it's going to go away.

I think that when we do those things, it's not only because it's art, it's because that's what was handed down from our original people.

- [Ty] When we talk about culture and tradition, oftentimes that's about as much as it is, it's just spoken.

But this is our practices, our ways, our teachings are meant to be... it's meant to be a lifestyle.

It's meant to be lived.

- [Masami] Kids here, they don't get that hands-on experience that they would have if they were home on their homelands with their people, and they aren't getting the knowledge from their elders.

- It becomes tricky because we don't have that place.

We don't have that local tribe, if you will, either that we can lean on as a big brother, big sister in the storyline, right?

The original inhabitants, the original Indigenous people of this area, you know, were forcibly removed back in the early 1800s.

Our Land Back NAICCO campaign, that has been us aspiring to acquire land of our own that we can gather and simply just be ourselves as we see fit.

And to practice these cultural practices, and to, again, revitalize this piece of us, you know, that we're having a hard time in this modern world hanging onto.

And so we've really been leaning into what we're calling NAICCO Outdoors.

And this has a lot to do with us being outside foraging, gathering, identification of plants, food, species, medicines, you know, and we're incorporating in fishing and harvesting, - [Masami] Like none of us are from here, but we've been here so long now that we belong here, we have to learn how to connect with this land.

We're learning how to forage.

We're learning how to hunt and fish here, and we're making it our own.

- [Ty] The cool thing about all of this is that, as it's progressing, we're beginning to see this growth, this sense of... our Native people being able to feel and show that they're comfortable in their own skin.

And that's a huge win.

- [Masami] I don't really feel like I'm a leader.

Honestly, I just feel like I'm a good relative to a lot of people that I deeply care about, and I want them to win.

And I think that we have found healing and restoration in our own lives through our spirituality, through our Native American culture that's being lost, and we feel like it's important to preserve it.

- August, 2025, marked 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

2024, Guggenheim choreography fellow, Ryan K. Johnson, is using his work to amplify the continuing struggle of the East New Orleans community.

Let's go behind the scenes of his sensory-driven, immersive experience.

This story is part of an annual series produced in collaboration with Ohio's public television stations that takes us behind the scenes of the arts.

(thoughtful music) (group humming) - And then one word.

- ZAZ: The Big Easy is an extension of my MFA thesis project, which is an extension of me falling in love with New Orleans.

I met Kelly School of Dance almost 16 years ago, and ever since, they cannot get rid of me and I'm not leaving.

- [Narrator] Hurricane Katrina, a most powerful hurricane with unprecedented strength... - Even though I watched it from the screen, once I became part of the New Orleans East community, I knew there was something within me and in my spirit that called me to create this work.

The tap dancers here.

Some of you just were this morning, I think it actually works.

I just need to see like the transition... (dancers tapping) So last summer, we had the first part of the creative residency.

Between last summer and now, a lot of the technical elements have come to life.

The integrated media reimagined music.

So we went from synthetic sounds to live recordings.

My team got bigger.

I released control a little bit.

Understanding the importance of having a team around me that cares about me, but also cares about the work has been transformative.

(soulful music) - As an artist, it's hard to get exactly what's in your mind out, right?

So I think I'm mostly translating what he wants.

It's hard to remember everything that he's doing, right?

So I'm always taking notes, following him around, but I'm learning a lot too.

Ryan has his hand in everything.

Everything.

From the sound to the music, to the choreography, to the set.

So I'm really just going around with him and making it all come alive.

(passionate music) - Being an outsider and working on the choreography and being able to embody those experiences can be a bit of a challenge, you know?

So, I have the pleasure of serving as the associate choreographer and bringing those ideas and visions and pieces to life.

And working with the cast to make sure that we are all on point and we're all telling the story to the best of our ability.

(passionate music continues) - With art making, pacing is huge.

With this work specifically, because it's such a huge ethic of care that has to go into this, because we're really taking the oral histories of survivors and turning it into embodied storytelling through these art forms.

And so, it's important that the work does, it educates people, but doesn't cause harm, right?

And so, the pace and the tempo and the flow and the orchestration of the dance and the story, it's really important that we don't overload the audience, the ideas, for it to be an immersive experience, but in a way that is healthy.

♪ Jesus ♪ ♪ Keep, keep me from my wrong ♪ - The audience will get to experience sand dance.

Sand dance is a art form that many people haven't seen in probably decades, but we are fortunate enough to be able to have predecessors of that art form that have left some treasures with us along the way.

And we are using the essence of sand dance as a way of symbolizing rebirth, and the birth of a phoenix coming back to life.

(suave music) - The show is, and I don't want to call it a show, it's definitely an experience.

And the experience is the intersection of theater and dance.

(dancers clapping) Yeah, it's here.

When you walk into the theater from the top of the show, it'll be about 5:00 PM on a summer day in New Orleans.

And then throughout the course of the prologue, you'll wind up landing inside of ZAZ, which is the center of the story.

- Whatever kind of drink you got at the bar.

What did you get from the bar?

(cheerful music) (dancers tapping) - You're transformed from walking into a theater lobby into a world.

And to be really clear, like this is not the full story of Hurricane Katrina, right?

Every person who experienced this storm and the governmental failures has their own story and their own connection.

This is a small group of people that I've become really connected to, and it's a part of their stories that we're bringing to life.

(dancers clapping) And so as artists wanting to make sure that we preserve these oral histories, especially those in the Black and Brown community.

- [Narrator] President Bush has declared a state of emergency in Mississippi... - It's important because we're currently living in an environment where Black and Brown identity and culture and history is strategically being erased.

And so, as a performing artist, as a Black body, it's extremely important to me that we find ways to use art as a medium to archive and preserve the oral histories to ensure that these stories don't go away.

And try to create something magical, bringing theater and dance together, bringing my 22 years of experience into this space, listening to all of these talented artists who have all contributed to it, right?

I had the idea, but none of it could have come to life without every single person who has put their hands on it.

(dancers tapping and clapping) I think sometimes when we see live theater, we always expect this happy ending.

And the reality is there really hasn't been a happy ending post-Katrina.

(soulful music) New Orleans to the East was one of the most prominent Black communities in New Orleans, and now it's a food desert.

Emergency services don't frequent the area.

And as someone who has a master's of fine arts and dance performance and social justice, I have to use the dance as a form of social justice.

And a lot of people ask, "Well, why are you doing it, you're not from New Orleans?"

I'm clear on that.

But I've been really blessed to have a fruitful career to put me in places that I can actually create some change, even if it's just a small push forward.

And because of that, and because of the way that I love the young people at Kelly School of Dance, the musicians of New Orleans, the artists, that's why I do it.

- If you crave more art goodness in your life, the podcast Rodney Veal's Inspired By is available now.

You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and find show notes at thinktv.org or cetconnect.org.

And that wraps it up for this edition of The Art Show.

Until next time, I'm Rodney Veal.

Thanks for watching.

(lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (lively music fades) - [Announcer] Funding for The Art show is made possible by: The Rockwern Charitable Foundation.

The L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation.

Montgomery County.

The Josephine S. Russell Charitable Trust.

The Virginia W. Kettering Foundation.

The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by: And viewers like you.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Closed captioning in part has been made possible through a grant from The Bahmann Foundation.

Thank you.