Adraint Bereal:
As It Appears

In 2019, while a student at the University of Texas, artist Adraint Bereal began creating a visual and discursive archive of Black student life on campus. Seeking to counter the systemic invisibility of his peers, Bereal embedded himself within the campus community, documenting personal histories in photographs and interviews. Recognizing the resonance of his growing archive, he quickly expanded his local project to campuses nationwide. Through candid photographs, intimate portraits, and interviews, Bereal mapped out a constellation of student experiences across public universities, trade schools, HBCUs, and Ivy League colleges, compiling the images and interviews into a published compendium as a gesture of historical intervention and revision. He called this project The Black Yearbook.

Adraint Bereal: As It Appears expands on The Black Yearbook project, juxtaposing archival images, documents, and video from UT and Austin repositories with over thirty photographs, essays, and recorded conversations with Black students attending American universities. Photographs of current and recently enrolled students share space with historical materials that reflect pre-segregation, the civil rights era, and recent social movements, expanding the context of individual experiences to include collective efforts to increase Black visibility and inclusion on campus. But rather than default to an objective, linear account of history, Bereal instead prioritizes personal narratives, illuminating the fragmented and ever-evolving landscape of Black collegiate life in the U.S.

As It Appears is a homecoming exhibition for the UT Austin alumnus, marking Adraint Bereal’s first institutional solo exhibition and featuring the largest presentation of works from The Black Yearbook series to date. Presented within the context of a university art center, the works demonstrate how the complexities of subjectivity and collective experience complicate institutional hierarchies and histories.

Adraint Bereal: As It Appears is curated by VAC Director, Max Fields.

Support for Adraint Bereal: As It Appears is provided by the Texas Commission for the Arts, C.C. Marsh, the Leonian Foundation, the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, Suzanne Deal Booth, and Nina Johnson Gallery.