Bahauddin “Bobby” Alam’s life is recounted in rich detail through “Along 155th Street, Where Windows Face East,” an exhibit at Harlem’s Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling.
A Smithsonian-inspired period room recreates the Bengali jazz musician’s 1950s apartment overlooking Jackie Robinson Park; followed by a map comprehensively tracing his tour across India; and ending in a display of collected items, including his guitar, steamer trunk, and era-specific outfits. Visitors will get to know Alam intimately by the exhibit’s conclusion.
But “Bobby” never actually existed—he’s the invention of married artist duo Chad Marshall and Priyanka Dasgupta.
“Bahauddin [is] actually a fictional character made up by us to point to the real history of Bengalis who lived as Black in the early 20th century during the laws against Asian immigration in the U.S. at the time,” said Dasgupta. “They came here mostly as men, found love in Black and Latino communities, and lived as Black in different parts of the U.S., a lot of them in Harlem.”
While Alam is fictitious, his story isn’t. The artists were researching a real-life Bengali jazz musician named Bardu Ali but couldn’t find a photo. Hidden history is, after all, hidden. Coincidentally, they came across anthropological picture archives used by the British to categorize South Asian people in dehumanizing, pseudoscientific fashion. One portrait stood out to Marshall: a Bengali peddler.
“He looked like a jazz musician from the 1940s with his coiffed hair,” he said.
Marshall painted over the peddler’s garb with a dapper outfit of jazz drummer Chick Webb. The image, originally meant to categorize and simplify a nameless man, ultimately became the dignified portrait of Bobby Alam. Other pictures of Bengali men were also transformed into Harlem jazz scenes, with the important rule of never modifying the subjects’ faces.
“We started to think about the reduction of these individuals into these stereotypical, ‘barbaric’ settings, because they’re all bare-chested figures [with some] holding bows and arrows and in loincloths,” said Dasgupta. “You’re stripping this person of all the nuances of his life and reducing him to this phrenological, stereotypical image and then slapping a label at the bottom.
“We said we’re going to pull all of the images from this manuscript to talk back to history and also say, ‘What if these people could have lived these really complex, rich, fabulous imagined lives?’ They became Bobby and then Bobby’s friends, fellow Jazz musicians, family members, and lovers and muses, and whoever else he encounter[ed], and then we wanted to point back to the archive.”
Alam also hits close to home for the artists. The period room similarly overlooks to the east like their own Harlem apartment. Dasgupta, who is Bengali, said Alam sees beyond the park when he looks out the window—he’s facing both Asia as an Indian and Mecca as a Muslim, complicating the idea of home. Marshall, who is Black, sees an opportunity of Black and South Asian unity through art and hidden history, which the artist couple can examine uniquely through their own identities.
“Certainly, many years [were represented by] a media portrayal of strife between the two communities, and we wanted to do something that was counteractive of some of the traditional portrayals you see in the media of Black and brown [including South Asian] relations,” he said. “This is certainly a story of things that happened. While Bobby is an amalgamation [and] creation, he’s not created from nothing.”
“Along 155th Street, Where Windows Face East” aligns with the museum’s attempts to speak to children at eye-level about complicated identity issues like race and gender, while keeping the tots engaged. Artist-in-residence Cecilia Jurado Chueca said the goal is to raise sophisticated children.
“The kids are very open and if you don’t sugarcoat everything, they get it,” she said. “You’re actually presenting through art things that are pleasant to know.”
Chueca said the hard questions—like one from her son about why his skin is darker than his white father’s—can be answered quite constructively through honest conversations about race.
She currently curates “UNTOLD STORIES: Six Women Artists in Conversation,” an exhibit examining womanhood through a worldwide lens. Chueca said the pieces in that exhibit often push youngsters to question gender roles in their own communities. One sculpture illustrates a wife’s creative pursuits while her husband serves as homemaker. Another artist snapped photos of Black queer women in New York City at a time when education about sexuality is under attack elsewhere in the country.
“I think that it’s important for kids to know that there are multiple identities, and that they can explore it without feeling that anything is wrong,” said Chueca.
It isn’t all serious: When the youngsters are exhausted from exploring the deep questions of race, gender, and sexuality, there’s an arts and crafts table nearby for them to play.
Along 155th Street, Where the Windows Face East and UNTOLD STORIES: Six Women Artists in Conversation runs until Feb. 18, 2024.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.