Unseen Routes: Mapping Black Albany’s Past, Present, and Possible Futures
Mapping What Was, What Is, and What Might Still Be
Albany is a city of ghosts and echoes, of streets that forget the footsteps they once held. Beneath the concrete and columns, under the weight of history, lie maps that no longer appear—Black neighborhoods erased, libraries swallowed by highways, homes vanished beneath the Capitol's shadow.
But absence does not mean silence.
Unseen Routes is a digital installation that blends speculative storytelling, archival memory, and layered sound. This map bends time—it remembers what was, listens to what is, and invites you to imagine what could have been.
Explore the Routes
Watch the Film
This short film anchors Unseen Routes—a journey through layered histories and possible futures. Watch, listen, and then follow the route that calls you.
Choose Your Route
Each path invites a different way of remembering and imagining Albany. Choose the one that resonates with you. Your response will be part of a growing archive of Black memory, presence, and possibility.
Choose a Route
Select from three paths to contribute your perspective on Albany's Black history, present, and future possibilities.
Pathways Through Time
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Path One: Past
Which stories from Albany's past do you carry—even if they're not written in the history books?
This path invites you to remember. To reclaim what was forgotten. To reimagine what could have been. Your reflections may be personal, ancestral, imagined, or historical.
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Path Two: Present
What does thriving Black presence in Albany look like to you today?
This path invites you to speak from the present. To name what holds you. To locate love, power, or clarity in the now. Your reflections may be joyful, complicated, tender, or sharp.
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Path Three: Possible Futures
What if Albany had always centered Black thriving—what might it look like now or next?
This path invites you to imagine. To bend time forward. To speak a future into being where Black lives, memories, and dreams shape the landscape.
Explore the Living Map
Each response becomes part of an evolving digital map—a chorus of pasts, presents, and futures remembered, reclaimed, and reimagined. This map does not end on the screen. It is alive. As you share your reflections—on the past, the present, and the futures you imagine—you help shape a living map of Black Albany. Each response adds to an unfolding archive of memory and possibility. Together, we are charting routes that history tried to erase, and dreaming futures that might yet be claimed.
About the Artist
Aiesha Turman is a scholar, artist, and memory worker born in Albany, NY. Her work explores Black presence through the lenses of Afrofuturism, feminist praxis, and ancestral memory.
This project was created for Opalka Gallery as part of the exhibition Compass Roses: Maps by Artists—Albany.