Tanio, Junell. Dark Hope. Photograph. Atlanta, 2026.
This collection began as an exploration of the life and connection I shared with my grandmother.Her stories lived in the past — difficult to grasp, held close to her heart. I started searching the world around her, hoping it would offer more insight into who she was.
This journey eventually led me to the 1940s Negro Motorist Green Book. A guide that helped African Americans travel through a segregated America — a time when getting lost or entering unknown territory could be dangerous. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, and places meant to keep Black Americans safe from "Sundown Towns."
I thought: what a concept — a book offering safety and freedom, yet still a tool of confinement. One bound to the places within its pages.
A Dark Hope.
Each design was constructed as an iteration of the same idea — an exploration of confinement and the freedom that lives within it.
The embroidered lines reference the roads and addresses of the Green Book. A constricted freedom. Movement defined by coordinates, bound to the places within its pages.
Black and white was deliberate. The progression from light to dark — the idea of the sundown town made visible in fabric. But through darkness, there is always something that persists.
The circles are that something. Inspired by the paintings of Aaron Douglass, where circles became a recurring presence — rippling outward like sound on water, like rings expanding from a single point. In Dark Hope, they signify exactly that.
Hope.