photograph courtesy the cmplx
Victoria Jones at The CMPLX.
Editor's Notes: This story was published in the May 2020 issue of Memphis. Over the final weekend in May, Jones was attending a protest Downtown, as citizens in Memphis and cities around the country express anger and pain over several recent killings, culminating in the death of George Floyd at the knee of police in Minneapolis.
According to the Commercial Appeal's Desiree Stennett, who filmed the scene, and Samuel Hardiman, "Jones is seen backing away from a marching line of law enforcement officers wearing riot gear. Law enforcement can be heard telling the crowd to move and seen pushing people back. Then a police officer is heard saying, "Somebody get her. Somebody get the girl in the gray hoodie.” Jones then turns away from an outstretched arm of an officer and is knocked to the ground. Multiple officers jump on top of her. She tries to get to her feet and manages to get on her hands and knees and then is knocked to the ground again."
We ask that readers consider the moment on the street — “Somebody get the girl in the gray hoodie” — alongside the magnificence of the work you see if you look even a little further. We ask that you consider that before reducing any person protesting to a cursory, accusatory glance. Every single one has a deeper, richer story.
To ensure the safety of the community in the midst of COVID-19, all programming and exhibits at The CMPLX are temporary closed.
Victoria Jones is leading me through the gallery and meeting space known as The CMPLX, nestled in a strip mall on the western edge of Orange Mound, hung with the vivid art of their exhibit, “The Audacity,” celebrating local Black illustrators, comic artists, and toy designers. It’s been just over a year since her arts nonprofit, The Collective, aka CLTV, moved into the space, and she’s reflecting on what’s been accomplished in that time. From the start, it was clear that the gallery, simply by being a safe space for the local Black arts scene, was much more than just a gallery.
“I couldn’t be prouder of our first year,” she says. “We’ve had some of the most meaningful conversations in this space. And I think our formula has been the same since we started: try to empower different people to lead discussions. We get these insights that we never dreamed of, because someone else with a completely different set of experiences was able to lead the conversation.”
It’s not every gallery that lists ‘conversations’ among its finest achievements, but from the start, CLTV set out to be more than your typical arts institution. There’s a sense of camaraderie and cooperation here that engenders inquisitiveness in all who participate, and that may be The CMPLX’s greatest asset.
photograph by justin fox burks
Photographer Ziggy Mack (left) and multimedia artist Lawrence Matthews, program director for CLTV, discuss how to display works in last year’s “Thug” exhibit at The CMPLX.
“The space we’re carving out allows artists, curators, whatever your medium is, to come in and discuss the topic before they even start making their work. So there are these other conversations that almost become therapeutic. The meetings that just the artists were having were groundbreaking, to the point where I felt I needed to step out and let them have that really safe moment together.”
“A really inspiring thing about Orange Mound is, a lot of the organizations here are led by Black women,” Jones notes. “And that’s my heart. I love Black women. There’s something there, just watching what we’ve persevered through that continues to be inspiring.”
The importance of safe spaces, of nurturing a sense of belonging, is a theme that arises again and again when Jones speaks of her motivations. It’s almost a maternal ethos, which seems to belie Jones’ youthfulness, but it’s also becoming this fledgling nonprofit’s recipe for success. As its executive director at the ripe old age of 29, Jones is helping to forge a cutting-edge movement that fosters both the arts and community simultaneously. In her view, that’s just what Memphis needs.
“I complain, and others do too, that ‘Memphis is 20 years behind.’ But what that does is give us 20 years of extra runway to see what’s happening in other cities, watching how New Orleans people are being displaced, or how Nashville has completely changed entire neighborhoods. Essentially, what we’re doing is trying to figure out, with our extra time, how we can blockade some of that. We’re thinking about how to be intentional about where we’re located, who we’re located close to.”
The importance of location, of being grounded in a community, explains why CLTV waited nearly three years to settle in a permanent home. After Jones helped found the nonprofit in 2016, she settled for shared spaces with other arts groups or in the erstwhile jazz club, Dizzy Bird. But when the current space, next door to the already-established Orange Mound Gallery (OMG), became available, all the boxes were checked. It’s no accident that The CMPLX is situated in the nation’s first neighborhood to be intentionally created by Black residents. It’s clear that Orange Mound grounds the nonprofit in ways both human and historical.
“A really inspiring thing about Orange Mound is, a lot of the organizations here are led by Black women,” Jones notes. “And that’s my heart. I love Black women. There’s something there, just watching what we’ve persevered through that continues to be inspiring.”
She notes a few, like Britney Thornton, founder of JUICE Orange Mound, who have affected her directly, laying the groundwork for The CMPLX. “Orange Mound is already a very energized space. We’re just trying to find ways we can exist within that. Miss LueElla [Marshall], who is at OMG and a lifetime community member of Orange Mound, was telling us how proud and excited she was, and she said, ‘Y’all are here now, you can’t go nowhere!’ There’s an expectation for us to exist, and commit to existing. So that, I think, is a good pressure to have on us.”
photograph courtesy the cmplx
Victoria Jones dives into the details of a show at The CMPLX as singer/songwriter Lavender looks on.
As we’re chatting, a man from the group using the gallery for a meeting of various local alumni of Morehouse College sticks his head in the office. “Love you, sweetie!” he beams.
“Happy birthday!” Jones exclaims, and then he’s gone. “That’s my old man,” she explains. “He’s a Morehouse alum. My little brother, him, my grandfather, and my great grandfather — all Morehouse men.” Family history is of paramount importance to Jones, for that’s where her own commitment to local Black culture and activism was forged. “He’s from Memphis,” she adds, “and my mom’s from Jackson. All my people are here — aunts, uncles, grandparents. They all come from this place. We were moving every other year as I was coming up. But Christmas breaks, summer breaks, we’d be coming back here. So it’s the only consistent thing.”
Now, Jones is fulfilling the promise of progressive change embodied by those who came before. “My grandma was heavily into the civil rights movement,” she says. “That’s on my dad’s side; she has passed. She was from Memphis too, and did a lot of work in diversity. I have a scrapbook of Memphis history from her from 1991, with all these newspaper clippings. In 1991, we had the first Black mayor and the opening of the National Civil Rights Museum. So it has all the newspaper clippings from that. And a letter about her legacy and continuing her work. When I turned 24, my mom found it in the attic. And you talk about boo-hooing!”
Combining that commitment to change with an interest in the arts arose serendipitously for Jones. “I went to Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, then graduated and came back here,” she says. “And I had no clue about what kind of job I could do. I majored in history and minored in African-American studies and English. But, while I was in school, I had a couple friends who were visual artists who kept all their sketches and paintings under their bed. I was like, ‘We’ve got to get these out somehow.’ So we started hosting art shows in college. That was just, ‘Let’s have some art shows, because that’ll be fun!’”
On returning to Memphis, Jones fell in with Crosstown Arts. “I was a gallery attendant and event person,” she recalls. “And I wanted desperately to talk about this work with someone who had a shared experience. So I started inviting aunts, cousins, and friends who were in town, just so I’d have someone to talk about it with. I started taking three folks a week on tours of the space. I’d tell them, ‘Use these resources! This place exists.’ And Crosstown has a bunch of resources. So honestly, the CLTV started by trying to get Black folks into Crosstown, where we had a chance to see the capacity art has for building community. And then it kind of grew from there. That’s the start of it.”
Being historically minded, Jones realizes she’s the latest in a long line of community organizers. “There have been so many folks who have done this before us,” she says, “like Black arts organizations, who were not able to sustain, not because they weren’t brilliant, but because there weren’t enough financial resources for them to be able to keep pushing. So we’re now trying to figure out how to build bridges between generations, and trying to incorporate what they already know into our work. We’ve watched our budget grow in a real way over the past two years, so it’s on the upswing. The thing that keeps me up at night is the sustainability of this. We have figured out something that works really well, but there’s always a fear that at some point we could burn out. That’s true of any nonprofit.”
Yet CLTV’s latest grant from the Kresge Foundation bodes well for the future. “We’re going to build from there,” says Jones. “And I don’t think it stops with us. We have partnered and worked hard with other Black arts organizations, like Unapologetic. Without going into a long list, folks are ready to invest. So how do we funnel our creative energy into communities we want to see invested in? And be intentional about that? We’re just the first domino.
“There are other folks who think we should be doing different things,” she continues, “but I don’t really care. At this stage, we’re walking with future generations. We’ve got our current generation and truly walking with our ancestors.”
