Arts & Culture

Roxbury native artist Ja’Hari Ortega was less than a year old when she got her first pair of hoop earrings and just a little older when she became fascinated with her mother’s earful of beautiful gold hoops.

Celebrity Series of Boston and GrubStreet celebrated the launch of their new app, ArtsCard Boston, on April 23.

Growing up, Jamaican-born artist Michael Talbot’s hero was Australian zookeeper and conservationist Steve Irwin. Talbot’s dreams of becoming a zoologist haven’t yet been realized, but his love of animals and the natural world comes through strongly in his paintings, illustrations and public artworks.

Celebrations for Haitian Flag Day take place on May 18 in Boston, and all over the globe, with parades and cultural as well as culinary activities. As the focal point of May, which is Haitian Heritage Month, Flag Day marks a day of liberation.

In “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” a Tony-nominated play by Jocelyn Bioh running at Speakeasy Stage, the audience spends a day with the stylists and customers at the salon, learning their dreams, their hopes and their fears.

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah still remembers hearing the first poem that moved him.

“Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan in a precise and well-acted dual role as the identical Smokestack Twins (one twin is nicknamed Smoke, the other Stack). The film takes place over a single day in October 1932 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the birthplace of blues.

Ron Murphy first became intricately involved with music at the age of five when he began singing at the Myrtle Baptist Church in his native Newton. Over 70 years later, he is still at it.

Painter Stanley Whitney found freedom in restriction. In his first retrospective exhibition “Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon” at the ICA Boston, viewers can see how the artist found his signature structure of colored blocks and the way he has explored that structure for decades.

As technology continues to advance, one of the things that is retreating is the human attention span. With so many options for things to see and engage with, it is becoming more challenging to linger and truly absorb any one thing.

For long scenes in “Night Fight,” a film by Tufts University faculty member Khary Saeed Jones, a car drives along a quiet, wooded road at night. The viewer is situated inside the car and silence envelopes the scene. At times we see Jones in the driver’s seat. At others there is only the road.

There’s an alternate universe where the United States has an African American female president. She presents a bold economic plan to world leaders at the G20 Summit with the aim of promoting financial stability in developing nations. This may seem like a pipe dream especially after last week’s tumultuous economic fluctuations, and for now it is.