TASWIRA Gallery Interview: Contemporary African Art in the Pacific Northwest

Opening Show at TASWIRA Gallery: Cristina Martinez’s To the Ones Who Remain Unbroken, 2025. (Photo: Briana Jarrett)

A Space to Embrace Expansion

Barnes first conceptualized TASWIRA in 2019, after she volunteered at the Bamburi Women’s Empowerment Center (BWEC) in Mombasa, Kenya. As a mixed-race individual with Nigerian and European ancestry, Barnes discovered that Kenya was where she felt at home for the first time. The experience was also life-changing in different ways; she found inspiration from the strength that the women embodied, and the ways in which they proudly practiced their traditions, regardless of the circumstances that they may have been in.

“When I came back to the U.S. from that first time, I was in such a shock of digesting what had just happened to me — inside, spiritually — and I was longing for more of that,” recalls Barnes. “It didn’t really matter how many African restaurants I could find here and eat at to kind of feel like I was at home again. That was another thing that made me want to build a community around that feeling.”

Early versions of TASWIRA began with pop-up events that hosted fashion shows and shopping experiences, before it became more of a white-wall gallery in 2022. Yet through every iteration, Barnes held in mind the reality that Seattle needed more contemporary African art. She recalls former Seattle gallerists like Miriam Ibrahim, who sold African diasporic work out of Pioneer Square before setting her sights on larger markets, like Mexico City and Paris.

“She absolutely hated being here in Seattle because people didn’t buy Black art or even figurative art. It was really difficult for her,” says Barnes. “Having a space that caters to… working with our clients and our collectors — and building that network of support and of art lovers here in Seattle — is also a huge reason why… the artists that we work with like have come to us. Because who else has a network of people here and all over that really love this kind of work?”

In April 2022, shortly after public spaces began reopening after the COVID-19 pandemic, Barnes was able to open TASWIRA’s first gallery space, in partnership with Seattle Restored — a program run by the City of Seattle and the nonprofit Shunpike, which activates vacant storefront spaces with art. She was only 22-years-old when she found herself on a mainstream television network, speaking about her emerging vision.

“I started without former knowledge or education in the arts,” Barnes explains. “It was really just like: this is something that needs to happen, and… I’m going to be the one to do it, and I don’t know how to do it, but I’m going to learn, and I’m going to learn in front of everybody.”

The inaugural space was located in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, near the Seahawks football stadium. Its first exhibit featured work from the Bamburi Women’s Empowerment Center, and BWEC’s work stayed on the walls for eight months.

“It was very much retail-focused, which was great, but that’s not what the community needed…” Barnes reflects. “The space was vacant most of the day, because people would come in for like two seconds, and then just walk out.”

She continues, “That was like the first kind of thought evolution that took place into, ‘How do we get people to stay in here longer and connect with the space how we want them to?'”

Barnes then shifted into putting more art on their walls and expanding TASWIRA’s focus to include local African artists. The impact felt immediate and profound.

“The majority of vacant storefronts were still vacant in Pioneer Square,” Barned recalls. “People don’t even feel comfortable coming into Pioneer Square, and they’re definitely not there to go shopping. People needed to find connections and different experiences.”

As Barnes learned more about being a gallerist, TASWIRA hosted more interdisciplinary events, and their exhibitions began to evolve. She comments, “I really was learning, ‘What’s a good time to shift different shows, and what are the different artists and types of art that we want to show in the space? What stories do we want to touch on next? What other kinds of media? What other kinds of events?'”

TASWIRA began to represent more artists and also hosted a Cultural Partner Booth at the 2023 Seattle Art Fair, which increased the gallery’s visibility alongside the region’s other top galleries. In February 2024, TASWIRA became fiscally sponsored through Allied Arts Foundation, which allows it to fundraise as a nonprofit and move beyond the many out-of-pocket expenses Barnes previously had to invest to get the gallery off the ground.

The fiscal sponsorship move turned out to be crucial, as TASWIRA was notified in late 2024 they would need to change venues. Their new gallery reopened in a different Pioneer Square in January 2025, kicking off with a sold-out opening featuring a series by Cristina Martinez, entitled, To the Ones Who Remain Unbroken.

Opening Show at TASWIRA Gallery: Cristina Martinez’s To the Ones Who Remain Unbroken, 2025. (Photo: Briana Jarrett)

Relying on the Personal to Inform the Physical

With Seattle being home to a Black population of about 7% – and with even fewer identifying as African – TASWIRA’s focus stands out as singular in the Seattle arts ecosystem. This, at times, can hold a bit of a learning curve for visitors, who have occasionally found the idea of an African art gallery to be unfamiliar.

“People would poke their head in and be like, ‘Can we come in?'” Barnes comments, regarding the first iteration of the gallery. “It’s like, ‘Well, yeah, you can come in; please, come in. You’re not not allowed to be here.'”

To help combat the intimidating feel some white-walled galleries may have, Barnes designs TASWIRA to be cozy and warm — full of earth tone colors and soft, cushy furniture.

“[Working with space] was the only way that I was able to really express how I was feeling [growing up] — by building an environment so that others can come in and feel that feeling,” she explains. “I couldn’t write it. It was tough for me to verbalize it. Through music, through arts… through community, and through people: that was the way that I was going to be able to cultivate that.”

Barnes’ personal connection to home, place, and identity seems central to her work at TASWIRA. Revealing a part of her story that she has never really shared publicly, Barnes says, “I never grew up around people who look like me.”

Barnes is mixed-race: Nigerian on her father’s side, and European on her mother’s side. She grew up almost exclusively with her mother. They were living in Chicago when her mother discovered that she had breast cancer, and a young Barnes asked her mother what would happen to her if anything ever happened to her mother.

“That was… the straw that broke the camel’s back. It kickstarted [my mom] into bringing me around her part of the family in Washington…” says Barnes, who adds that the two lived for years with Barnes’ grandmother in Snoqualmie, some two hours outside of Seattle.

Barnes’ mother eventually beat breast cancer, but the move was not without deep consequences. Transitioning into Washington state schools was the first time that Barnes had ever encountered racism. It became especially intolerable when she was enrolled in middle school around the Olympia or Tumwater area, about an hour south of Seattle.

“The bullying just got so bad. It was everything from the kids to the staff and counselors,” she says. “My mom tried to hire two private investigators to get into the school, [because] the only way for them to get evidence towards the bullying that was happening… It’s like, ‘To what extent do we have to go to? What more pain do I have to endure?'”

To survive the middle school bullying, Barnes instead went to live with one of her mother’s friends in Seattle and attended Catholic school there. On the weekends, she would take the train back to visit her mother, and she saw first-hand how the consequences of being bullied not only affected Barnes herself, but her mother’s life as well.

“We’ve gone through so much together,” says Barnes. “It was because of the stress of my bullying situation that she lost her job, because, when I was in the hospital, she would have to be with me and wasn’t at work… We [also] lost the house. Our house went into foreclosure.”

With all these compounding circumstances, Barnes was living independently on her own by the age of 17.

“I was a single child too, so I don’t have any siblings or anything,” adds Barnes. “That was a huge part of my experiences not being connected with my African roots — not feeling proud of who I am and the skin that I’m in, the body that I have.”

Barnes’ challenging upbringing has been absolutely crucial to how TASWIRA came to evolve. Visiting Africa helped her connect to who she was, on a deeper level, and she brought these lessons into her artistic vision.

“The moment that I went to Africa for the first time, and these women surrounded me and just said, ‘Welcome home’ — that’s the first time that I had ever felt safe and at home, and not the odd one standing out, in a room or even in a family,” says Barnes.

“To the… young child who walks into this space [today] and sees their own possibilities? That means everything to me. It’s everything,” she continues. “That makes every single sacrifice that I’ve ever had to make completely worth it.”

(TOP IMAGE) Nigerian artist Olumide Oresegun, gallerist Avery Barnes, South African artist Lele Msibi, Seattle-based Eritrean artist Nahom Ghirmay
(BOTTOM IMAGES) Work by Olumide Oresegun of Lagos, Nigeria

TASWIRA as a Place to Call Home

Barnes’ intentional approach to TASWIRA is also seen by the artists that they work with. When Kenyan artist Michael Waweru first relocated to Seattle, he was looking for a place to build community and sell work; he stumbled across TASWIRA after a simple Google search for “African Art Gallery Seattle.”

“He found us and reached out to us, because he was like, ‘I saw that place immediately, and I was like, ‘Yep, that’s home,'” Barnes recalls.

Another example is internationally-renowned oil painter, Olumide Oresegun, from Lagos, Nigeria, who TASWIRA began representing in early 2024. Oresegun is a contemporary figurative and hyper-realist artist, whose paintings sometimes look like photographs and have powerful, in-your-face compositions. Oresegun’s work has been shown all over the world and he has seen success at high-profile events such as Southeby’s auctions, but he had yet to really intersect with the American market. He decided to fly out and stay with a friend in Seattle — with the goal of matching with a gallery.

“He wanted a space that would really understand and care about his work — not just in a surface-level way,” says Barnes. “His work is obviously phenomenal, masterful work, and he’s built up quite the portfolio, but [he wanted a gallery that] cares and can speak to the meaning of his work and of his story.”

In addition to Oresegun, TASWIRA has gone on to represent artists like Lele Misbi from South Africa, and Nahom Ghirmay, an Eritrean artist living in the Seattle area. Barnes very much sees the importance of bringing international African art to Seattle, but also recognizes the need to work with emerging local artists who need gallery support to get a leg up.

“It’s been really interesting getting to know [emerging artists] and hearing their experiences selling work and in the Seattle community,” says Barnes, who adds that most of their Seattle artists have never shown their work outside of the city. “It’s become a primary focus within the way that we operate as a gallery — to have long-term relationships and contracts with artists, and that’s strategically planned to build that portfolio; that resume of where their work has been exhibited, [while] working on doing shows and art fairs outside of Seattle and the U.S.”

Barnes notes that this approach has value because some of the gallery’s largest purchases have been from outside the Seattle area.

“[We are focused on] selling their work to institutions [by] meaningfully holding their hands and guiding them through this process, so that it allows them to focus on just creating and it keeps them hopeful, because there’s a plan moving forward,” she adds.

(TOP IMAGE) Work by Seattle-based Eritrean artist Nahom Ghirmey
(BOTTOM IMAGE) South African artist Lele Msibi

The Emergent Magic of Being a Gallerist

Magic and divine timing have very much played a role in how TASWIRA has sustained itself and chosen the artists that it works with.

“The individuals who have divinely aligned [as] who we represent in this space are some of the world’s top contemporary artists and will be in the next three years,” says Barnes. “I genuinely feel that way. There’s just a magic behind them.”

While the number of artists that TASWIRA represents is in part due to capacity, there is also an element of je ne sais quoi in Barnes’ decision-making. It’s a feeling, and it’s a vibe. Barnes loves to work within serendipity and magic.

“It has everything to do with looking at a piece and at a person and the natural magic that just radiates from them…” says Barnes. “That’s the only determining factor of how we represent artists. It’s like, ‘Are they dope?'”

“It doesn’t matter if they’ve made one piece, and that’s it,” she continues. “We’ve had that with Lele [Msibi], from South Africa. She just had that, and we’re like, ‘Wow, like we need to do everything in our power to support her. Literally.'”

Part of the magic has also occurred with TASWIRA itself. Barnes shares that some long-held practices in the art world are in the midst of shifting, and emergent curators and gallerists are changing older narratives. The space allows for creativity in how a gallery like TASWIRA might sustain itself, but it can also be challenging.

“I was the only employee, only graphic designer, only website builder, only everything, sales person,” says Barnes. “I was in that gallery every single day for two years by myself, and there were a lot of times where I just totally wanted to give up, and I was that close to actually doing that. [But] the magic has really been within the people.”

Barnes recalls a period when she was feeling particularly alone. Rent was due the next day – and with basically nothing in the bank account, Barnes felt that TASWIRA would be unable to continue if she didn’t make a sale that exact day.

“I get in the gallery… and all of a sudden, I kid you not, like someone comes in and spends $10,000 on art in the gallery,” she shares. “And I’m like, ‘I have to keep doing it.'”

Such strange scenarios have been present throughout Barnes’ journey with TASWIRA. At another pivotal moment, the gallery required last-minute renovations and upgrades that were quoted up to $8,000. Again, the money was scarce, until random IRS tax returns suddenly came in to save the day.

“It’s been miracles of just being able to do what needs to get done, and nothing more,” comments Barnes.

Yet amidst all the magic, some paths forward have also required tough decision-making that has prioritized the vision of TASWIRA over personal needs and assets. Barnes admits that she has had to make a lot of sacrifices.

“In order to get the first gallery up and running, it was either go to Africa or pay $1,000 that you’ve been saving up to take your car off the repo list,” says Barnes. “I made my decision, and it was not my car. And same thing with my apartment. I literally lost my car; I lost my apartment, and I put everything into that space because I just believed in it.”

Moving into TASWIRA’s second gallery space at the top of 2025 has felt like a resonant shift that brings the gallery into its next chapter. Barnes feels like it’s important to share the lessons learned in TASWIRA’s early days, as it is finally able to grow beyond Barnes running the entire show. The gallery has recently hired for numerous roles and has also onboarded John Wesley as Curator and Senior Art Advisor. Having a team seems as though it will be transformational for building TASWIRA into its next phase.

“One of the magic things about art is the way in which it inceptions us in beliefs about people,” Wesley says, sitting alongside Barnes. “For instance, you don’t have to say literally, ‘Black is beautiful,’ or, ‘Brown is awesome,'” when you see a painting depicting the figures.”

“We decolonize the media, through joy, through love, through hope, through beauty. Beauty itself is its own revolution, especially if you’ve been programmed that you’re not beautiful because of the body you’re born in or the skin that you’re born in,” he continues. “People need to see ideas of themselves attached to beauty.”

Wesley curated TASWIRA’s inaugural show with Cristina Martinez in the gallery’s latest space, and he stresses that work like hers is not only to be taken literally. Of Martinez’s art, he says, “It’s figurative work, but you understand that it represents you, and you can see yourself in the work, and you can see yourself in that magical environment and find serenity.”

Perhaps by coincidence and perhaps not, such ideas of serenity can also be found in the work of other artists that the gallery represents. Ghirmay’s show at TASWIRA, for instance, was literally titled, Journey to Serenity, with some of its focal pieces featuring individuals in dreamy poses or babies calmly floating through water.

“That’s where galleries are so unique,” says Barnes. “It is kind of like a representation of…”

“The energy you want to see more of in the world,” Wesley says, completing the sentence.

And indeed: if such energy has to do with the power of African contemporary art in a primarily white city, such as Seattle; if such energy has to do with creating a space for people like Barnes and Wesley to see themselves in work; if such energy has to do with magic and serendipity… then TASWIRA is very much doing it.

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