An exhibition by Black Revivalist
Aishamanne Williams
Aliha Thalien
B+
Blair Barnes
Cat Jones
Dahee Kim
Deanna Barahona
Fox Maxy
Gloria Chung
Helen Peña
Jalen Adams
Jard Lerebours
Kikesa Kimbwala DeRobles
Nala Haileselassie
Neema Ngelime
Onajevwe
Paige Taul
Uber Lopez Enamorado
10.17- 12.05.2026
Open Fridays and Saturdays 12:30-5:30 PM or by appointment: inquiry@room3557.com and blackrevivalist@gmail.com
Exhibition made possible by Black Revivalist, curated by Camm Harrison.
Black Revivalist is a film screening series founded by Los Angeles-based film programmer and curator Camm Harrison. The series highlights underseen Black cinema and video from across the diaspora, while celebrating the rich diversity of Black filmmaking and art over the past two centuries, finding the connective threads between works, and introducing them to new audiences.
@blackrevivalist
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The Nonce was a Los Angeles rap duo formed by Sach Illpages and Yusef Afloat, who met while still in high school in the late 1980s. Both rapped and produced, something that set them apart from the beginning. They became regulars at the Good Life Café, and later, at Project Blowed in Leimert Park, where they rubbed shoulders with Los Angeles underground hip-hop royalty, building community with artists like Freestyle Fellowship, Chillin Villain Empire (CVE), Medusa and many more. Still teenagers when they first signed a record deal, Sach and Yusef eventually released their music through Wild West, a subsidiary of Rick Rubin’s American Recordings. Their singles “Mix Tapes” (1993) and “Bus Stops” (1995) appeared on their first full-length project, World Ultimate (1995), today considered a L.A. hip-hop classic.
The Nonce came to a tragic end with Yusef’s death in 2000, under mysterious circumstances. In an outtake from Ava DuVernay’s 2008 documentary This Is the Life, Jah Orah recalls finding Yusef on the 110 freeway in the middle of the night. Despite losing his close friend and collaborator, Sach never stopped making music. To this day, he continues producing and releasing material by The Nonce as well as solo recordings by Yusef, extending a creative relationship beyond its abrupt ending.
The group’s name gives this exhibition its title. The word “nonce” came to Sach during a family trip to Louisiana. His mother had gifted him a Merriam-Webster dictionary, which he read voraciously. He came across “nonce” and was immediately drawn to its definition as “a word invented or used for a particular situation.” He quickly called Yusef to tell him what he had found. From then on, they would be known as The Nonce.
While For The Nonce is an ode to Sach and Yusef, it takes its curatorial direction from an alternative meaning of the phrase: “for the nonce” as “for the time being, temporarily,” evoking a particular relationship with time.
The idea for the exhibition began with a fan-made video for The Nonce’s “Who Falls Apart?” uploaded to YouTube in 2012. The video pairs the song with personal footage shot around Fairfax Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard likely in the late-2000s. Seen from the present, the video captures fragments of a Los Angeles that feels familiar and distant, with ordinary images of orange nighttime streets, storefronts, and passing car lights.
For The Nonce relies on the name of the group as a guide to presenting films centered around memories, and being in the moment. The selection is divided into two parts. “For Yusef” gathers works capturing moments as they unfold, centering presence. “For Sach” presents films reflecting on memories and matters of the past, grounded in return.
Among the sixteen films in the exhibition is Dena Not For Sale (2025) by the collective Here Lay A Home and directed by Kikesa Kimbwala DeRobles. Made in relation to Altadena and the Eaton Fire, the film reflects on memory, community, and Black place-(un)making. Cat Jones’ The Quiet One (2021), turns inward, as a meditation on one’s own presence, in the solitude and intimacy of home. The selection of films moves across time and space, starting on the Caribbean island of Martinique with Aliha Thalien’s Nos Îles (2023), before eventually returning to Los Angeles, where it concludes with Blair Barnes’ Two Sun (2023).
Alongside the film selection, For The Nonce presents art pieces by Onajevwe, Deanna Barahona, and Uber Lopez Enamorado. Barahona and Lopez Enamorado draw from the histories of their families, both rooted in Southern California and connected to Guatemala, tracing memory across generations and geographies. Onajevwe similarly turns toward family, reflecting on her childhood in Nigeria and the objects found in domestic spaces. Her pieces carry the intimacy of things discovered in a grandmother’s home, transforming personal and familial memory into reflections on Black visuality, childhood, and history.
At the center of the exhibition is a space dedicated to The Nonce. Record covers, posters, photographs by Brian “B+” Cross, liner notes, magazines, and other materials trace the life of the group and the creative relationship between Sach and Yusef. Together, these objects evoke a friendship, a scene, and a Los Angeles whose memory lives on through personal belongings, stories, and the people who carry them.
- Samuel Lamontagne
Research and Community Consulting
Signed World Ultimate poster, from the personal collection of Sach Illpages.
Uber Lopez EnamoradoPapas Sin Sal
2026
Acrylic, graphite, spray paint, oil on canvas
36 x 48''
Onajevwetessitura
2026
Found wood, inkjet image, liquid glass
7 x 10 x 3”
OnajevweHarvest
2025
Inkjet print, glitter, spray paint, resin on found wood
12 x 12"
OnajevweThird Eye
2025
Found wood, resin, glitter, spray paint.
14 x 7 x 6
Onajevwegemini
2026
Velvet, resin, inkjet print, charms, wood
20 x 15 x 4"
Deanna Barahonahoney brown and yellow
2025
Screen print on wood, yellow wood stain, ceramic tile, grout, honey brown stain, glitter
37 x 17''
Boombox and demo 4-track recordings tape of Yusef Afloat's "Foreign Objects" and "Hard Times"(released 2021) from the personal collection of Sach Illpages, member of The Nonce.
B+Untitled
1994, 2026
Archival Pigment Print
1/1 Single Edition
31.5 x 31.5" (Print)
35.5 x 35.5 x 1” (Framed)
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