RSVP for Duquesne/August Wilson House Fellow Presentation, Award Ceremony

RSVP now to attend a special celebration tomorrow, Thursday, Nov. 14, to honor Njaimeh Njie, the fall 2019 Duquesne University/August Wilson House Fellow.

The event, open to the campus community and the public, will be held from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Bayer School’s Pappert Lecture Hall. A reception will follow in the Bayer Rotunda.

Together, the University and August Wilson House will recognize Njie and her work and will present her with a special award. President Ken Gormley and August Wilson House Executive Director Paul Ellis will both give remarks at the event, along with Dr. Kathleen Glenister Roberts, director of the Duquesne University Honors College.

An award-winning photographer, filmmaker and multimedia producer, Njie will showcase some of her work through The Power of Preserving the Present, which will feature photographs she has taken and interviews that she has conducted this week with Duquesne University and Hill District community members.

A Pittsburgh-based artist, Njie centers her work on everyday people, narratives and landscapes, with a focus on how black people perceive themselves and their experiences in the cities they call home. In 2018, she was named a Creator of the Year by Pittsburgh’s Creative Industries Network. Njie also is founder and lead producer of the nonfiction storytelling company Eleven Stanley Productions.

Njie’s recent public art project Homecoming: Hill District, USA, which has received wide acclaim, documents everyday experiences of the residents over the years. The project’s website, www.hillhomecoming.com, is a digital archive comprised of oral histories and photos arranged to tell “a roughly 100-year history” of the Hill District. August Wilson House is proud to have featured one of Njie’s installations for the past year.

Njie’s work has been featured in publications such as CityLab, Belt Magazine, the Huffington Post and the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Storyboard blog. Exhibits of her work have been featured locally at SPACE Gallery, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, as well as Gallery 102 in Washington, D.C.

Supported by a grant from the Nancy Jones Beard Foundation, Duquesne University/August Wilson House Fellows serve as artists/scholars-in-residence. Fellows develop their own creative work and participate in educational events with the University, August Wilson House and the community.

The Fellowship program furthers Duquesne’s Signature Partnership with August Wilson House. Duquesne has partnered with August Wilson House since 2011, with students and faculty from its Honors College. Duquesne supports the programs of August Wilson House to pay tribute to playwright August Wilson’s legacy, art and historic presence.

In addition, Duquesne University recently received and will administer a federal Save America’s Treasures grant of $499,628 on behalf of the August Wilson House. The grant will support efforts to restore the Pittsburgh playwright’s Hill District childhood home as a multidisciplinary arts and education center.

For more information on Njie and the work and activities she’s been involved in as the , Duquesne University/August Wilson House Fellow, visit www.duq.edu/njie-2019.