Andrea “Philly” Walls: Preserving the Nuance and Joy of Black Life

She’s ensuring that the complexity and brilliance of Black life are never erased.

Andrea “Philly” Walls is more than an artist — she’s a cultural guardian and storyteller, building bridges between past and present through creativity and care. As a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and archivist, Walls curates narratives that illuminate the everyday beauty, resilience, and humanity within Black life. Her work insists that these stories not only be seen but deeply felt and remembered.

Influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Walls intentionally challenges portrayals of Blackness centered solely on pain and oppression. Instead, she uplifts joy, community, and the extraordinary grace found in the ordinary. “I want the joyful side to be, at the very least, an equal part of what people think they know,” Walls told NPR (NPR, 2023).

The Birth of the Museum of Black Joy

In 2020, as the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd and the surge of global protests, Walls felt a spiritual urgency to create something restorative. Watching images of Black death play endlessly on screens across the nation, she decided to build a counter-narrative — one rooted in joy and life. From this moment of resistance, the Museum of Black Joy was born — a digital archive dedicated to celebrating the fullness of Black existence (Smithsonian Magazine, 2022).

“I just hit the streets, took my knowledge of Black culture and Philadelphia culture, and began collecting non-traumatic images, just as a gift to the atmosphere,” she explained in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer (2021). “Because I had started to doubt my own reality based on the fact that when I opened my phone to check the weather, I was watching somebody be murdered in slow motion against my own will.”

What began as an act of healing has since evolved into a community movement. Through photography, digital storytelling, and collective memory, the Museum of Black Joy has become both sanctuary and statement — a declaration that joy, in all its forms, is a birthright.

Reclaiming the Land and Its Stories

Walls’ vision stretches far beyond the streets of Philadelphia. Her recent work takes her across the American South, tracing ancestral connections to lands once marked by forced labor but still pulsing with inherited wisdom. Standing in a cotton field, she describes a moment of revelation:

“This cotton isn’t evil. I’m dressed in cotton. It’s not the land. It’s not the plants. It’s not the rice. Rice feeds people. It’s the exploitation that’s evil,” she reflects (The New York Times, 2024).

This profound shift anchors her ongoing photographic journey — a reclamation of spaces historically associated with pain, yet still capable of beauty and renewal. Her lens honors the knowledge that enslaved Africans brought with them — in agriculture, medicine, and survival — emphasizing that their expertise shaped the foundation of American life. As The Guardian notes, Walls’ work “invites viewers to see the South not as a graveyard of suffering, but as a landscape of legacy, rebirth, and reclamation” (The Guardian, 2023).

The Art of Joy as Resistance

For Walls, storytelling is not passive; it’s participatory. It demands engagement, reflection, and creation. As an educator, she often uses art-making as a method of reconnection — reminding people that creativity can heal what history has fractured. Through collage, writing, and photography, she shows that joy is not the absence of struggle but the persistence of light within it.

“Joy can emerge and coexist with and from every human experience,” she says. “It’s a practice, like yoga. You have to strengthen the joy muscles to be able to live in joy.”

In a time when images of violence and despair often dominate screens, Walls’ work stands as a luminous counterpoint — proof that joy, too, is a form of resistance. Her art teaches that reclaiming joy is both a personal practice and a collective duty.

As she beautifully reminds us, joy is more than a feeling — it’s a form of remembrance, resilience, and inheritance. And above all, it’s ours to claim.