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UPDATED: March 1, 2021 at 3:53 p.m.

Instead of a common advertisement, a poster titled “Federal-Aid Highway Act” is secured with painter’s tape to a light post on Burt Street, providing a flash of color under the gray cover of Interstate 81.

The poster, designed by fifth-year School of Architecture student Parinda Sangkaeo, mirrors the design of 1950s automobile ads. It references the white flight and displacement of African American communities that occurred during the building of the national highway system, she said.

The piece is one of 15 posters showcased in the three-part video exhibition “Hidden Realities.” The exhibition is a part of a lecture series from Syracuse’s chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students. The final lecture for the series concluded on Feb. 22 and consisted of an all-Black women’s symposium made up of architects Felecia Davis, Ifeoma Ebo and Pascale Sablan.

NOMAS is an organization on campus that aims to be a safe space for students of color in the architectural field. The club was revived in 2018 and is known for celebrating Black History Month each year.

This year, the Black History Month lecture series aimed to unveil hidden histories surrounding racial inequality in the architecture field and beyond. Sofia Gutierrez, the NOMAS secretary and second-year architecture student, thought of the theme after hearing SU professor Sekou Cooke speak in class about the 15th Ward, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Syracuse that was destroyed during the construction of I-81.

Cooke ended up being the first speaker in the lecture series — where he presented again about the 15th Ward — and was followed by a lecture about the hidden history of Black churches and then an all Black-women symposium.

The videos were shown before each lecture and often tied back to the topic being discussed. SU architecture students Sangkaeo and fifth-year student Benson Joseph curated the videos. The pair curated last year’s NOMAS Black History month exhibit, which honored former professor Kermit Lee Jr.

For Ebonia Moody, vice president of NOMAS, contributing to the Black History Month celebration was really important. Sometimes she feels as if the message the month is trying to convey gets lost and was relieved to have a say in how NOMAS celebrated the month, she said.

The title of the video exhibit, “Hidden Realities,” refers to the histories we may not notice at first but experience in everyday reality, Joseph said. Each of the three videos showcases five posters that are scattered throughout the city. Each poster has its own hidden meaning.

“What would be seen as history nowadays is something that some people are facing as everyday realities,” Joseph said.

NOMAS hopes that the series will inspire people to look into the hidden histories surrounding marginalized people, including people of color.

Joseph’s poster “The Mission” illustrates this concept well and coincided with the second lecture by religious studies professor Biko Gray, hosted on Feb. 19. The poster touches on the history behind a local Syracuse restaurant, The Mission.

“The idea is that you are sitting in this beautiful restaurant, enjoying your mojito, eating your tacos, but like 200 years ago, a slave used to hide there,” Joseph said. “It was their lifeline.”

In January, Sangkaeo and Joseph directed the poster designers to choose from a list of topics surrounding racial issues, but ultimately designers were free to take the posters in any direction they wished. Each designer had two weeks to finish their posters and then find a location in Syracuse that had a layered history to it.

Other posters shed light on topics like equality for transgender people of color and the bureaucratic barriers of the Syracuse education system.

Under the direction of Michael Speaks, dean of the School of Architecture, the curators found a way to make the different designs more cohesive. One of the ways they did this was by including either a red, green or black border to the posters in homage to the Pan-African flag.

As well, Sangkaeo and Joseph collaborated with NOMAS to understand the topics covered at each of the three lectures. Each video was placed into three categories: the local Syracuse area, the second on the national level and the final on the international stage.

Through their research, they compiled archival footage, soundbites and images to compliment the videos they created. Sangkaeo spent hours editing the videos, even surprising Joseph with her work in the third and final one.

“I started crying in the middle of the presentation … I just couldn’t stop,” Joseph said. Despite not always relating personally to every part of the project, he still hopes the videos capture that emotion for others.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post misstated Sofia Gutierrez’s name. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on February 28, 2021 at 10:08 pm