Acrylic painted mural on Gallery Wall at the Mills. There is bright red painted text that reads: The sun sees all the things you try to mask and still thinks you are worth illuminating. It is enclosed by tendrils of yellow.Photo by Melissa Blackall

Mithsuca Berry

Mithsuca Berry (they/them) nurtures a practice that is much like the ocean: beckoning play and child-like wonder in tandem with alchemizing introspection that can only be found by exploring the darkest depths of life. Berry is a storyteller, narrativizing new pathways to healing and liberation and creating a new set of tools for all to confidently walk these paths. Their work currently spans the mediums of painting, digital illustration, fiber, and art education. As an avid world-builder, their storytelling is expressed in many forms.

Berry’s solo show, “Mithsuca Berry: The Sun Knows No Impostor” was organized by curator Sienna Kwami, an independent curator whose curatorial path includes mache trip-nou (in english: walk our gut): a show focusing on the revolutionary spirit of Ayiti in the work of non-binary and trans Haitian artists, presented at Waller Gallery in Baltimore, summer 2021.

“Mithsuca Berry: The Sun Knows No Impostor” was the second exhibition in the new “1:1 Curatorial Initiative” series presented in the Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts. Each exhibition in this series presents a collaborative project between one curator and one artist, and either introduces a new artist or highlights a new aspect of a more experienced artist.

Between July 2020 and Summer 2021, Mithsuca Berry participated in Boston Center for the Arts  Combahee’s Radical Call: Black Feminisms (re)Awaken Boston, a yearlong, multi-platform curatorial project co-curated by Arielle Gray, Cierra Peters, and Jen Mergel, and stewarded by the wisdom of original Combahee River Collective member Demita Frazier.

Berry worked on Protect Your Seedlings, a window installation for the Mills Gallery; and engaged in conversation throughInterphase: How the Black Feminist Archive Yields New Bodies of Creative Growthas part of a Saturday Afternoon Program Series: Combahee Conversations.