Being Chaka

What we did

Being Chaka is the culminating result of TÉA Artistry’s multi-year exploration into how Americans apprehend the construct of race in their lives and how this affects the way they treat each other and the personal, practical, and institutional decisions they make. As the New Ohio/ IRT Archive Residency company, TÉA was given the opportunity to collaboratively create two works of Insight art, Paradigm and Being Chaka. 

Chaka is a Black teenager from the Bronx who is grieving the loss of his father who died of complications from sickle cell disease. The doctors said there was nothing more that they could do. Chaka thinks it was actually about what they were willing to do.

He’s recently transferred to East Prep High, an elite private school in Manhattan that’s newly implemented critical race theory, which might seem very forward-thinking, but quickly turns into a fraught terrain where the impacts of inherited privilege and oppression play out on a teenage battleground. 

As Chaka tries to find his place in this new environment amidst echoes of the past, he becomes increasingly enraged with a system that not only failed his father, but continues to demand his loyalty.