Jakian Parks: The Black Land

Jakian Parks: The Black Land

Rituals and Rejoicing in African American Rodeo Culture

November 6, 2025–June 1, 2026
Mary LeFlore Clements Oklahoma Gallery

The Black Land envisions a pyramiding structure, layering the historical phases from Black captivity to contemporary Black equestrianism. Within this conceptual framework lies a sacred and congenital agricultural virtue, where Oklahoma’s Black rodeo culture becomes both symbol and setting for survival, resurgence, and celebration. Much like the rodeo itself, The Black Land connects the past and present, situating the American West as a living archive and center stage for Black cattlemen and cowboys alike.

At the heart of this exhibition is the land, a complex and enduring source of both struggle and identity within the African American experience. For Black Americans, farmland evokes a lineage of forced labor, sharecropping, and ongoing challenges around ownership and sovereignty. Yet The Black Land also affirms the expertise and divination that has grown from this proximity. Through its gestures and imagery, the exhibition suggests that ancestral spirits hold the key to a deeply rooted knowledge of plantation systems, gardening traditions, and livestock ranching.

Ritualistic practices—merging African and Christian traditions—form the foundation of cultural healing that continues to sustain Black communities. The photographs in The Black Land embody a quiet grace that redefines historical narratives and contributes to a broader understanding of the American landscape, resisting the stereotypes historically imposed upon Black bodies.

In this world, as captured by Jakian Parks, subjects are seen in full agency—free from the confines of invisibility, exploitation, or exclusion. They represent a return to inherited land and the reclamation of independence, unshackled from the generational constraints of the South. Through Parks’s lens, The Black Land honors the dignity, beauty, and power of Black equestrian life as a living tradition of cultural and historical significance.

About the Artist
Jakian Parks is a photographer and documentarian whose practice centers on themes of culture, equestrianism, and homage to his native Oklahoma. Rooted in Black portraiture, his work offers a visual lexicon that honors African American identity through an intimate, community-driven lens. Parks seamlessly merges storytelling and documentary approaches to elevate underrepresented narratives, capturing the often-overlooked beauty, complexity, and tenacity of Black life in America.

A self-taught artist working primarily in film, Parks saturates his photographs with a tactile sense of closeness and worship. His interest in rodeo culture stems from his late aunt, Shay Nolan, who introduced him to the traditions of Black cowboy life. This familial entry point has since deepened into an artistic and archival commitment to documenting Black agricultural practices and equestrian history. Through his lens, Parks excavates cultural memory and bridges the past with the present, creating a visual archive that resists erasure and honors ancestral knowledge.

About the Guest Curator
Chloe` Flowers is a writer, archivist, and educator from Houston, Texas. Her work explores the intersections of visual culture, cultural history, nostalgia, and critical race theory through prose, essays, and curatorial practice. Flowers is particularly invested in preserving primary source narratives that amplify Black voices and lived experiences. Her recent projects include oral histories and interviews that document and celebrate intergenerational knowledge within the African American community.

Jakian Parks: The Black Land is supported by Allied Arts, ARTDESK, Annie Bohanon, The Chickasaw Nation, E.L. and Thelma Gaylord Foundation, Leslie and Clifford Hudson, Inasmuch Foundation, Kirkpatrick Family Fund, Lettering Express, Oklahoma Arts Council, Pirates Alley Picture Frames, George Records, SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital, Velocigo, and Visit OKC.