The inaugural InLight fifteen years ago was held on a First Friday in September and attracted approximately 5,000 curious art lovers along Broad Street.

The event’s nonprofit organizers, 1708 Gallery, thought it would be a one-time thing, but they may have underestimated Richmonders love of artwork that glows at night.

Returning to its roots and it’s home environment, InLight 2023 will take place this Friday, Nov. 3 and Saturday, Nov. 4 along the 200 to 400 blocks of West Broad Street in the Richmond Arts District. With a theme of “Reflection and Refraction,” this event honors past, present and future through site-specific, multimedia works in public spaces.

The artworks were chosen to engage with and expand upon the histories and activities that have long defined Broad Street, including the industrial, economic, architectural, and racial histories of downtown Richmond and their legacies; the role of public art in the upper South; and the significance of Broad Street’s surrounding communities.

In addition to bringing InLight home to 1708 Gallery, the theme is intended to consider the way the neighborhood has changed and to highlight how art continues to activate and animate one of Richmond’s main arteries and thriving areas. This year’s event is curated by Dr. Tiffany E. Barber and Ra-Twoine Fields.

Myriad reasons brought InLight back to the Arts District. Executive director Emily Smith says the gallery was excited to engage with the neighborhood since it’s been six years since the event was held there. “A lot has changed, including the fact that we purchased our building as part of our plan to develop an artist residency program on the floors above the gallery,” she says, adding that “this decision and our future plans reflect a deep commitment to Broad Street that’s echoed by the move to bring InLight back to our home turf. Plus, we get to have InLight on First Friday!”

Another factor following last year’s InLight in Bryan Park was adopting a new planning process to allow for longer timelines, meaning that they’re already planning InLight 2024. Says Smith: “We felt that producing InLight on Broad was a good platform from which to start that.”

The Arts District has seen some big changes since the first InLight in 2008: the ICA, Quirk, Pulse, Common House and an array of smaller changes, including businesses and restaurants leaving. “We miss Nick’s and Comfort every day, but lots of new ones have popped up too, like Jamaica House, Verdalina, CNTR, and Field Floral,” she says.

This year’s artists are based out of Virginia, Ohio, Rhode Island, New York and Sweden. Nonhumanities is a Charlottesville art collective consisting of Anna Hogg, Conrad Cheung, and Katie Baer Schetlick, who work across multiple disciplines, including installation, architecture, performance, movement, video art, and sound. They were drawn to InLight by the public and unorthodox status of the space and how the festival and its sites this year change up the standard art world rules of how one might engage, see, participate, move, and react with the work.

Nonhumanities is interested in how they might imagine what they call “spatial genres” such as gardens, streets, and parking lots as new sites for movement and sociability.

“Here, we’re thinking about the maze as a historically charged spatial genre that might be reconfigured for new opportunities, alternative dynamics of power, multiplications of narrative, processes of cooperation and community, forms of alienation and play,” says Hogg. “We’re also interested in the ways that these reconfigured spatial genres might be responsive to the existing built environment, in this case, Broad Street and its particular architectures.”

InLight’s largest attendance was in 2018 at the VMFA with over 23,000 visitors across two nights. For those who’ve been attending since the event began, the return to Broad Street feels like coming home.

For the nonprofit gallery, the 15-year evolution of InLight is a source of accomplishment.

“I’m proud of all the staff members past and present who’ve worked tirelessly and fearlessly to produce this event and I’m proud of all the artists who’ve embraced the challenge,” says Smith, who also acknowledges the continuing support of 1708’s board of directors and the many sponsors. “I’m also proud of the ways that InLight has grown, particularly in our capacity to support the participating artists. Our financial support today is five times greater than it was when we started out.”

Perhaps most significant for the Gallery is the way they’ve focused the curatorial mission of InLight to really engage with dialogues and narratives in the community. InLight has evolved into a site-specific light-based exhibition specifically about Richmond, not just light. Smith notes that this focus distinguishes it from other light-based programs around the country.

“It’s not for nothing that many, maybe most, other light-based exhibitions and programs, from the super big ones with multi-million-dollar budgets to programs similar in scale to InLight, have either ended or have taken time off,” she says with deserved pride.

“InLight might be the only continuously running light-based exhibition in the country.”

InLight 2023 is held on Friday, Nov. 3 and Saturday, Nov. 4 from 7 to 11 p.m. along the 200 to 400 blocks of Broad Street. For more info, visit 1708inlight.org