Through abstract shapes and bold colors, the horrors of racism and segregation of Jim Crow America came to life in Nellie Mae Rowe’s brushstrokes. Now, an upcoming documentary is tracing the life of the groundbreaking, self-taught artist.
AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, Black Public Media’s Peabody Award-winning series, is featuring Rowe in This World is Not My Own, which premieres July 2 on YouTube. She is voiced by three-time Emmy Award winner Uzo Aduba in the documentary.
Born on July 4, 1900, to a sharecropper in Fayette County, Rowe became one of the most influential and distinctive artists of the 20th century. At her home museum, which she referred to as her “playhouse,” locals came to see the eccentric collection of whimsical sculptures and paintings, ornaments, garland decorating bare trees, potted plants, and handmade dolls.
Rowe’s pieces depicted Blackness as a superpower rather than a burden, rejecting the societal norms of the Jim Crow era. The vibrant colors, eccentric patterns, and found materials, such as her own chewing gum, align with Afrofuturism as a way of self-healing and liberation.
“It wasn’t always the literal world, it was the emotional or spiritual world that she perceived herself to be a part of in her art,” Ruchi Mital, the film’s producer, told Capital B Atlanta. “So even living in a world that was unkind, violent, and turbulent, that’s not the world that she saw, nor the one that she wanted to create.”
Directed by Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell, the film has already won several awards, including the Atlanta Film Festival’s Best Cinematography Award, the Mendocino Film Festival’s Jury Award for Best Documentary, and a Best Documentary Award Special Mention at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
In collaboration with Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, This World is Not My Own had a special premiere Juneteenth at the Tara Theatre. The event featured curator Katherine Jentleson and Rowe’s great-nieces Cathi Perry and Cheryl Mashack, who appeared in the film. Andrew Young, the civil rights activist and former mayor of Atlanta, also appears in the film.
With the help of Judith Alexander, an Atlanta native and artistic visionary, Rowe’s art became well known in curated exhibitions. Alexander became enthralled with Rowe’s playhouse and continued to promote her and other self-taught artists at the Alexander Gallery on East Paces Ferry Road.
Rowe’s art quickly gained so much traction from this exhibit that first lady Nancy Reagan requested she make the White House’s Christmas card in 1982. Rowe refused, according to an oral retelling by Reginia Perry in the documentary.
“When Dr. Perry shared that story with us, we just thought it was really emblematic of who Rowe was, because she wasn’t saying I’m setting out to be famous and I’m not sending out to impress a president or please a first lady,” Mital said. “She had this understanding that, ‘This work is for me, this work is for my people.’ It’s like a declaration of self, unapologetically saying who I am and who this is for.”
In documenting Rowe’s life, the underlying heart of the film explores themes of race, religion, gender, age and class between Rowe’s unlikely friendship with Alexander, the daughter of wealthy segregationist lawyer and religious leader Henry Alexander.
“One would not think these two women would necessarily cross paths, but beyond where they started in life, there was a friendship really forged in creativity.” Mital said. “Something really beautiful happened when the two of them came together that now we all get to benefit from.”
She also noted how the pair’s differing perspectives helped strengthen their friendship and artistic expression.
“You can see all these wonderful photos from the ’70s when they visited New York; they’re both two women, and they’re later in life, and they’re eating an ice cream cone together,” Mital said. “But also that they were two strong women that were sometimes gonna have different opinions, which I think is the beauty of it.”
Since 1979, Black Public Media has worked with independent filmmakers to distribute documentaries and films illustrating the beauty of the Black diaspora. BPM saved the AfroPoP series from a likely cancellation after a 2025 congressional vote rescinded $1.8 million in previously allocated funds.
With the creation of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange in 2008, independent filmmakers have highlighted Black history and societal issues through impactful, contemporary narratives. On June 15, season 18 opened with Listen to Me, a documentary focused on Black maternal health calling for accountability and change in the medical field.
“I feel like AfroPoP has always kind of been very bold in its curation; there were always voices from the diaspora,” said Denise Greene, series producer and director of AfroPoP. “We always hope that every film has made some sort of change. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a change that you can point to in legislation, but awareness is so key because you might be able to say this is the film is the reason that this conversation is happening.”
Greene emphasized how This World is Not My Own teaches the critical history of Black Americans.
“The root of American culture is really formed by our everyday people, and I love that Nellie Mae Rowe is one of those everyday artists who’s using everyday optics and making beauty with her world,” Greene said. “That’s her world, and I think that’s the base for American culture.”
The documentary’s producers said they didn’t take a traditional approach to making this film, as the team found source material through on- and off-the-record interviews rather than archival footage and documented research. Mital said this forced a more creative approach to telling Rowe’s story as a producer.
“We had to really rely on interviews as research tools, so it’s really almost like an oral history, where we talked to a lot of people,” Mital said. “We thought in the spirit of Rowe because she was an artist who could make something out of anything she could get her hands on. She famously said she could turn nothing into something, and the team thought, in her spirit, let us try and do that same thing.”
