肉肉传媒

Project Wall East: Kayte Terry

August 28, 2021鈥擩uly 30, 2022

The ZMA is pleased to present a newly commissioned work by Philadelphia artist Kayte Terry.

Terry鈥檚 work examines the literal and figurative boundaries of the body. Through photography, video, collage, installation and object-making, she unravels issues of illness, family, memory, longing and loss. The patchwork of materials she uses form a personal language that speaks to the fuzzy intersection of personal desires and cultural expectations as seen in the work on display. As a queer woman living with a cluster of auto-immune diseases, she is interested in making the invisible illness visible, as well as finding beauty in pain and restriction. Most recently,  she  explores inter-dependency and love, particularly through d/s, communal and ethically non-monogamous relationships. Terry often pieces together materials that are imprinted with the shape of the body such as socks, gloves, and her own skin with materials like shower curtains, balloons and fashion magazines.鈥疶he patchwork of these materials form a personal language that speaks to the obscured intersection of her own personal desires and feminine cultural expectations.

Project Wall West: Jamele Wright Sr.

August 28, 2021鈥� July 30, 2022

Curatorial Project Director: Emily Knight 

The ZMA is pleased to present a newly commissioned work, ReBORN #4.02 by Atlanta artist Jamele Wright, Sr.

鈥疻right creates abstract works that explore鈥痶he Black American vernacular experience that also generate dialogue regarding the Black American experience in the South. 鈥疻right collects and combines found materials, Dutch Wax cloth, and Georgia red clay to create conversations surrounding family, tradition, and the spiritual relationship between Africa and the South. The ZMA is thrilled to support a local artist of merit through this commission. 

From February 22 to July 30, 2022, the ZMA is pleased to present an additional new work by Wright on the Project Wall North by the artist, in association with the large-scale commissioned work.

Leonardo Drew: Cycles, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation

February 20鈥擬ay 7, 2022 

Curated by Loretta Yarlow,鈥疍irector of the University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMass, Amherst 

The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation is honored to present the exhibition鈥疞eonardo Drew: Cycles, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation鈥痑nd to publish the accompanying exhibition brochure as part of an ongoing effort to share work from the collection and to support critical dialogue. Jordan Schnitzer states, 鈥淚 often speak of how difficult it is to be an artist. And the struggle to challenge, risk, transform and innovation are certainly at the heart of Leonardo Drew鈥檚 visual language. His work is immersive and personal without being leading. It is up to the viewer to interpret and participate in the communion of physical form and individual history. Leonardo鈥檚 work makes tangible a refuge that allows for self-reflection and perhaps space in which to contemplate the constructs of beauty.鈥浓赌�&苍产蝉辫;
 
Leonardo Drew: Cycles, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation,鈥痜eatures many of Drew鈥檚 sculptures as well as numerous prints and works in handmade paper.鈥�鈥疞eonardo Drew鈥檚 prints, at once powerfully large yet fragile, test the versatility of the medium, transforming cotton paper pulp and pigment into what suggests densely populated cities, a forest, or an urban wasteland. They sometimes look like maps of geographical landscapes viewed from above, while others are reminiscent of the night sky and distant galaxies. Evocative of fire, soil, sky, and water, there are strong perceptions in both microcosmic and macrocosmic scale.鈥疧rganic forms within the composition undulate with various textures and luminosities, pushing the boundaries of its materiality. Much like his sculptural installations in wood, Drew starts with a raw material, transforming and reconstructing its essence until it resembles debris. Through this process, the artist articulates diverse histories of chaos, and cycles of birth and death.鈥疎xamples of the Drew鈥檚 sculptures will also be on view. Using a variety of off-the-shelf materials (wood, cardboard, paint, paper, plastic, rope, and string) combined with natural materials such as branches or tree trunks, Drew subjects these elements to processes of oxidation, burning, and weathering. These labor-intense manipulations mimic natural processes and transforms these objects into sculptures that address both formal and social concerns, as well as the cyclical nature of existence.鈥�

New York Times art critic Roberta Smith describes Drew鈥檚 work as 鈥減opped, splintered, seemingly burned here, bristling there, unexpectedly delicate elsewhere. An endless catastrophe seen from above. The energies intimated in these works are beyond human control, bigger than all of us.鈥� 

_{Featured image: Leonardo Drew, Number 58P, 2017, edition of 3, pigmented, printed, and cast handmade paper 漏 Leonardo Drew Photo courtesy of Pace Prints}

Walk In Beauty

January 11鈥擣ebruary 12, 2022

Location: Don Russell Clayton Gallery 

Curated by Cynthia Nourse Thompson

Walk In Beauty an exhibition highlighting Native American artists, features prints from the permanent collection of the ZMA alongside prints produced by . CSIA is a renowned studio focused on contemporary printmaking that is located on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in the foothills of Oregon鈥檚 Blue Mountains. Walk In Beauty presents a careful selection of works by outstanding Native American artists of diverse backgrounds and talents. The exhibition title refers to the Din茅 (Navajo) dictum 鈥渨alk in beauty鈥� which translates to creating beauty and harmony. CSIA provides a creative conduit for educational, social, and economic opportunities for Native Americans through artistic development. Prints published by Crow鈥檚 Shadow Press can be found in major collections including: Library of Congress, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Portland Art Museum, Eiteljorg Museum, Wellin Museum of Art, Davis Museum at Wellesley, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In collaboration with the the exhibition also includes a unique selection of Cherokee artifacts from the at KSU. These rare items includes an 1860 printing of the New Testament translated into the Cherokee language; a map of the Cherokee Nation engraved by English engraver and cartographer Thomas Kitchin (1718 鈥� 1784), who may have engraved it from an Indigenous drawing; and a facsimile copy of the Cherokee Phoenix dated December 25, 1830. The Cherokee Phoenix was the first Native American newspaper in the United States. The Bentley Rare Book Museum鈥檚 issue of the Phoenix includes numerous articles of interest, including a speech excerpt by pro-removal president Andrew Jackson, opinion pieces by white citizens exposing the immorality of Indigenous removal, and a printed account of the Cherokee Nation鈥檚 legal action to declare political sovereignty. The ZMA is pleased to feature these printed artifacts alongside and in conversation with contemporary prints by Native American artists.

Photo 1: James Lavadour, Crow鈥檚 Shadow Series鈥�, 2008 - 2010
Monotype on Rives BFK paper 
Courtesy of the artist and Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts, Pendleton, OR
Photo 2: Thomas Kitchin
Map of the Cherokee Nation, 1760
Paper and ink. Courtesy of the Bentley Rare Book Museum, 肉肉传媒, 肉肉传媒, GA  

Fall 2021 Exhibition Series

This Mortal Coil and The Labor of Remembrance Prints and Textile Works by Louise Bourgeois are two interrelated exhibitions in dialogue, seeking to mitigate emotional suffering and corporeal pain. The ideology of craft collectively employs active and investigative methodologies, alongside devout and obsessive tendencies to facilitate one鈥檚 redemption. This impassioned approach to making by hand, with the inherent connection of ritual and process to that of materiality and craft, draws one to consider the ability of compulsive labor to serve as a remedy for grief. Conceptions of anguish, memory, and extreme vulnerability are displayed in extravagant and brutal force to reveal how histories, both shared and individual, articulate the human condition. The themes addressed in these two exhibitions are more relevant than ever, in response to current shared grim realities and global struggles and their relationship to loss, [in]justice, and mortality. Thus, the works selected illuminate empathy, grief, and loss, as shared universal themes. 

This Mortal Coil
August 28鈥擠ecember 11, 2021

Location: Mortin Gallery

Curated by Cynthia Nourse Thompson

A collection of works by seventeen prominent contemporary artists present a visual dialogue that was strikingly raw and at the surface of our emotional armature鈥� one which most individuals work diligently to prevent illuminating. This imposing presence of fear and loss was conveyed through dramatic images, which while beautiful, were laden with sorrow and despondency. Each artist summons the viewer to pause and reflect on unbearable suffering, both individual and collective, and the frailty of the human condition. Works on display are presented through a timely and despairing lens, pleading empathy, suffering, and sacrifice as shared universal causes. Moreover, the quiet ferocity of devotion as presented through craft, materials, and process provoked one to somatic response beyond exercised humility. Although the artists in This Mortal Coil confront us with fearful depths lurking beneath our exterior, their perspectives beckon us to fathom its darkness and arise to find clarity and strength and the self-recognition that without this palpable dimness, light would not exist. Within darkness, there are moments of great beauty and certainty.  

Featured artists: Janine Antoni, Louise Bourgeois, Sonya Clark, Gail Deery, Carson Fox, Markus Hansen, Donna Smith Jones, Anders Kris谩r, Rosemary Laing, Pixy Liao鈥�鈥�, Roberto Mannino, Martha McDonald, Oscar Mu帽oz, Tony Orrico, Dario Robleto, Piper鈥疭hepard, and Anne Wilson. 

Featured image: Rosemary Laing鈥�, a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes #5, 2009鈥�, C type photograph, Edition 2 of 8鈥�, 2009 Courtesy Rosemary Laing and Galerie Lelong & Co., New York
 
Archived Associated Programming:

Archived Recording

Jenni Sorkin Virtual Lecture 

The Labor of Remembrance Print and Textile Works by Louise Bourgeois

August 28鈥擠ecember 11, 2021

Location: Don Russell Clayton Gallery

Curated by Cynthia Nourse Thompson

Louise Bourgeois calls upon both subtle and obvious metaphors associated with textiles within her work: the spider, the needle, clothing, and flax. She has stated, 鈥淚 always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.鈥� This art of making, specifically a return to the physicalness of creating, is wholly present in Bourgeois鈥� needlework. She poignantly renders the construction of a diary, through entries realized in strands of thread and layered fabrics, as dimensional compositions. The careful presentation of a select grouping of her works, in association with those comprising This Mortal Coil, further establishes the relationship of craft with contemporary artistic practice while also rendering an impactful narrative. 

Featured image: 
Louise Bourgeois 
TOPIARY, THE ART OF IMPROVING NATURE(detail, plate 6), 1998 
Portfolio of nine drypoint and aquatint etchings on paper. Each: 39 1/4 x 27 3/4"; 99.7 x 70.5 cm.  
Photo: Christopher Burke
漏 The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
 
鈥疉ssociated Archived Programming:

Virtual Scholar Lecture with Sewon Kang & Felix Harlan: Lecture and discussion on
The Print Work of Louise Bourgeois on Content and Process

The 9th Art: Frames and Thought Bubbles

January 23 鈥� May 8, 2021

Location: Don Russell Clayton Gallery

The 9th Art: Frames and Thought Bubbles provides a comprehensive overview of comic art, sharing examples of a wide variety of visual and narrative storytelling styles from panels in early newspapers to contemporary comic images. The original drawings and prints presented in this exhibition highlight the artistic skills of the master artists who defined the comic art form and the contemporary artists who created some of the most famous and influential characters in our shared cultural experience. This encyclopedic exhibition, curated by Geo Sipp, director of KSU's School of Art and Design and professor of art, feature a selection of American and Franco/Belgian comic book art on loan from collections and individual artists.

The term 鈥�9th Art鈥� acknowledges the reverence for which Franco-Belgian audiences regard comics in their culture. In France and Belgium, the term bande dessin茅e, which derives from the original description of the art form as drawn strips, analogous to the sequence of images in a film strip, have been given the honor of being referred to as the 9th Art since the 1960s. French film critic Claude Beylie first used the term in an article he wrote for the magazine Lettres et Medecins in 1964. Expanding on German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel鈥檚 Lectures on Aesthetics, in which major art forms are ranked, comics and bande dessin茅e have followed film and television into the realm of Fine Art. As such, The museum is pleased to present this prominent and extensive selection of works at the Zuckerman Museum of Art which challenge the construct of traditional narrative storytelling.

Installation image ofThe 9th Art: Frames and Thought Bubbleson view at the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Photo by Mike Jensen. 

Resources:

, 2013
The Magician (2013) by author Chris Byrne, includes a dozen separate publications, using a variety of techniques. Co-designed by Scott Newton and published by Marquand Editions, Seattle. Edition of 20. Coming soon to the KSU Archives!

Spring 2021 School of Art and Design Faculty Exhibition

January 23 鈥� May 8, 2021

Location: Mortin Gallery

Featured artists, , , Sandee Chamberlain, , , , , , Joe Karg, Kristine Kim, ,, , , and . 

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Installation image of theSpring 2021 School of Art and Design Faculty Exhibition at the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Photo by Mike Jensen. 

Virtual Tour of the Exhibition

Celebrating Black History Month: Honoring African American Artists in the ZMA Permanent Collection

February 1, 2021 - February 28, 2021Location: Virtual Exhibition Series

In recognition of Black History Month, the Zuckerman Museum of Art presents this series of virtual exhibitions comprised of artwork by African American artists from our permanent collection. Celebrating Black History Month: Honoring African American Artists in the ZMA Permanent Collection features work encompassing a variety of styles and mediums, expressing each artist鈥檚 plurality of vision and experience. This curatorial project offers our talented museum student assistants the opportunity to interact with academic peers and museum staff, engage in scholarly research, conceive, curate, and actualize independent exhibitions utilizing the prominent collection of the ZMA. Individual responses to the collection were realized as thoughtful and timely exhibitions, highlighting each student鈥檚 unique perspective and ability to form a personal narrative. All students were afforded guidance and support throughout the entire process from all ZMA staff, including curatorial mentorship from our director of curatorial affairs, Cynthia Nourse Thompson.

Aaron S. Coleman,Stockholm Syndrome,2013, ink on paper, color lithograph, gift of the Southern Graphics Council International, courtesy of the Zuckerman Museum of Art.

Jonathan Beaumont Thomas: Sign of the Times Portfolio

In conjunction with the exhibition, The 9th Art: Frames and Thought Bubbles, the ZMA presents a portfolio of intaglio prints by artist Jonathan Beaumont Thomas, titled Sign of the Times.

About the Portfolio: 鈥淲hen I imagined that on seeing his pictures I should get a clue to the understanding of his strange character I was mistaken. They merely increased the astonishment with which he filled me. I was more at sea than ever. The only thing that seemed clear to me - and perhaps even this was fanciful - was that he was passionately striving for liberation from some power that held him. But what the power was and what line the liberation would take remained obscure. Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain.鈥�  -W. Somerset Maughan, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919, pg.133. No one has written more beautifully about the inscrutability of images and their possession of people than W. Somerset Maughan. Even today, in the great ocean of digital images, his words from a century ago speak to the vast and deepening uncertainty that lies at the end of the swim.

I spend a great deal of time collecting and organizing pictures, images of all sorts, searching for signs, for relationships, for indicators of value. I'm intrigued by the intense specificity and simultaneous randomness of the whole enterprise. The best description of my artwork is to say it is squeezed out of this process, one small drop of juice from one large piece of fruit. I have long been interested in the role of images in worship, conflict over idolatry, and the relationship between iconoclasm and shifts in communicative media.  These interests lay the groundwork for a deliberate process of creating narratives that extricate themes embedded in the mass of images that I both consciously and subconsciously collect. 

The nine etchings that comprise the Sign of the Times portfolio are structurally divided into quadrants. That idea came from comics and the goal of unfolding a story. Within each window I challenge myself to create a relationship between elements that yields a type of small truth concerning the picture鈥檚 inhabitants, and perhaps their relationship to the viewer.  Working in intaglio, at least for me, has always been such a battle of wills. It can be so uncompromising, scraping copper with steel. But what a thrill to work and maneuver the texture of a metal plate just enough to capture a creeping shadow against the wall, the cast of an oncoming storm or the glow of a candle lit room. It can also take a long time. And what does it mean to spend a long time making a picture of something so fleeting and inconsequential as a chaff of wheat shifting in the wind? -Jonathan Beaumont Thomas

Jonathan Beaumont Thomas,The Curtain, 8鈥漻6鈥� image, 14鈥漻12鈥� paper, intaglio, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

The Hand Print Workshop International: Process & Innovation

June 5 鈥� July 17, 2021

Location: Don Russell Clayton Gallery

Dennis O鈥橬eil [1946  - 2020] founded the Hand Print Workshop International [HPWI] in 1984 with a vision of furthering the innovation of screen printing through establishing international collaborations with artists. Dennis was an inspirational artist and collaborator who dedicated his life to this endeavor. In 1989 at the fall of the Soviet Union, the workshop embarked on a unique journey in partnership with Russian artists in Moscow. What began as a risky endeavor to conceive the Moscow Studio would ultimately become the center for collaborative screen printing in Russia for nearly a decade, featuring some of the most renowned Russian artists of the past twenty-five years. The workshop returned to the United States in 1997 and continued to support an active artist residency program locally, nationally, and internationally鈥� including artists from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Chile, Israel, and Cuba. The experiences and lessons cultivated from the Moscow Studio influenced the studio鈥檚 work and role as a model for the future of contemporary printmaking practices. By creating support and opportunities during uncertain times, HPWI provided artists with a platform and a voice to express individuality and perspective on critical social justice and human rights issues.

The Hand Print Workshop International: Process & Innovation presents a dynamic selection of twenty-five collaborative prints by nineteen artists. The exhibition visually chronicled a studio committed to experimentation and discovery and contesting the boundaries of contemporary screen printing through innovative new practices that embrace the medium's artistic potential. Dennis was a champion of silkscreen printing, establishing a legacy of cross-cultural connections and advancing printmaking as a powerful contemporary art form. The works featured in this exhibition exemplified Dennis' visionary acumen, commitment to mutualism, and love for the medium. Moreover, through these works, his legacy endures.

Dennis O鈥橬eil,Moscow Revisited, 2011, cold wax medium and oil paint, unique print, 26.5 x 32 Inches.

Skopelos Foundation for the Arts: A Site for artistic and cultural exchange Webinar

Dennis O鈥橬eil: Process & Innovation Video

In Collaboration: selections from the ZMA Permanent Collection and SGCI Archive

June 5 鈥� July 17, 2021

Location: Mortin Gallery

n Collaboration: Selections from the SGCI Archive, presents a rich selection of offerings illustrating the notable and vital developments in the field of contemporary printmaking practices. The SGCI organization has long maintained national and international recognition in the discipline of printmaking, which now extends into the collaborative arenas of both papermaking and book arts. This exhibition frames, in both a physical, historical and visual sense, the context of this art-making discipline as punctuated milestones chronicling its past.

In Collaboration celebrated the achievements made by contemporary artists who are challenging and redefining the medium to create works that are technically and conceptually diverse; innovative and consistently flawless in craftsmanship; and above all true to each of the artists鈥� concept and vision. 

Rachel Simmons,GHOST SHIP, 2016, Ink on paper, screenprint, Created for the 2016 Southern Graphics Council International Membership Exchange.

North Project Wall: Tony Orrico

September 11鈥擠ecember 12, 2021

Artist Tony Orrico presents Prepare the plane, a performative piece with dental occlusions on paper made over the course of an 8.5-hour performance. The work is was on view on the Zuckerman Museum of Art's Project Wall North. 

West Project Wall: Greely Myatt

January 23 鈥� July 17, 2021

Curated by Cynthia Nourse Thompson

The ZMA presents three works by artist Greely Myatt to coincide with the exhibition on view in the Don Russell Clayton Gallery January 23 鈥� May 9, 2021 titled The 9th Art: Frames and Thought Bubbles. All works by Myatt, Untitled Pages (Hagar) and (Beetle Bailey), 2011 and Oh $#*t 2014, reinterpret the recognizable graphic conventions of the comic strip and speech bubble as a reimagined visual language. Myatt is prominently known for his monumental installations and amusing sculptural works which often incorporate found elements.

Installation view of Greely Myatt'sUntitled Page (Hagar)andUntitled Page (Beetle Bailey) 2011, Painted and polished steel and air, 73 x 53 x 3鈥�, Courtesy of the artist and David Lusk Gallery, Memphis and Nashville. Photo by Mike Jensen. 

North Project Wall: Jess Jones

August 1, 2020 - July 17, 2021

Curated by Ginger Wolfe-Suarez

is a textile artist based out of Atlanta, GA. Over the past decade she has conceptually and materially experimented with found and re-used textiles through aesthetic, layered, and stitched compositions. Weeping Quilt (Yo-yos) is a newly commissioned, site-specific installation that engages both contemporary and historical ideas of craft, labor, and the re-use of found textiles. Because many of these quilting pieces were found in various states of completion by the artist, there is an aspect of finished and unfinished; of pulling together pieces that were abandoned or never finished by their makers. This work uses large volumes of undulating color made from small gathered circles of fabric. The individual circular pieces were commonly referred to by quilters as 'Yo-yos' in a quilting style that is associated with the 1920's, but still used by modern quilters. Her works presents the opportunity to discuss ideas about creative authorship, and what constitutes a finished work. Jones's work engages material culture through re-imagining what has been left behind, and tactile memory as a space for cultural and creative possibility in American art.

Installation view of Jess Jones,Weeping Quilt(Yo-yos), created in 2020. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by Mike Jensen. 

The Susan O'Malley Project

August 1, 2020 - August 1, 2021

The Susan O'Malley Project is a site specific installation featuring the work of artist Susan O鈥橫alley. Her work explored generosity, positivity, and sincerity, and the profound possibility of listening as a kind of artistic practice. O鈥橫alley was an artist and curator of Mexican-Irish descent whose work often interwove cultures and perspectives, engaging various aspects of production and dissemination throughout material culture. Her work appeared on fences, posts, and signs in areas that were being heavily gentrified. Throughout her practice, she met people in our society in their space as they were, as they are. Many of the works in this solo project are curated from a series titled Advice from My 80 Year-Old Self. In this series, O鈥橫alley explored intergenerational knowledge sharing by asking members of the public what advice they would give their younger selves. O鈥橫alley explored positivity and the human capacity for happiness, but she also explored profound loss and grief throughout her artistic career. All of her work was cohesive in its capacity for human connection across cultural space.

Installation view of Susan O'Malley's work,It Is Possibleat the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Photo by Emily Knight. 

Robert Sherer: Stronghold

August 1, 2020 - July 17, 2021

Curated by Ginger Wolfe-Suarez

Stronghold is a site-specific installation by Georgia-based artist, Robert Sherer, created to be experienced by walking over the work. Sherer eloquently and urgently represents human experience primarily through the forms of drawing and painting. Throughout the past three decades of his art practice, the artist has experimented in material and process while navigating complex topics relating to the LGBTQ community and the HIV crisis. Stronghold was initially conceptualized in relation to his own memories about being bullied in childhood which is a topic that affects youth throughout our region. Sherer's work has often included autobiographical narratives while exploring ideas of experimental portraiture and alternative forms of history-sharing. This work represents cultural growth, suffering, engagement, and hope.

Stronghold was commissioned by the museum in an effort to support living artists in the South-East.

Installation view of Robert Sherer'sStrongholdat Zuckerman Museum of Art. Photo by Shane McDonald.

 

A Peculiar Proximity to Spiritual Mysteries

August 29 - December 6, 2020

Take a .

A Peculiar Proximity to Spiritual Mysteries showcased various key contemporary works from the permanent collection of the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Curated by artist Pablo Helguera and Ginger Wolfe-Suarez, the experimental exhibition drew on many rare works of art as well as some that have never been exhibited. The exhibition featured alternative methods of display, supplementary learning experiences, and sound recordings. Preparation for this exhibition included research and curatorial assistance by Michelle Lopez, registrar/collections manager, as well as collective dialogue and collaboration with the ZMA staff.

The curators initially researched artists of diverse cultural backgrounds in the permanent collection of the ZMA and then chose artists to highlight. The highlighted artists employ a range of techniques to explore issues of identity, race, and cultural origin. They often reference geography, translocation, cultural traditions, translation, political history, and collective memory. Language and storytelling are also common threads woven throughout the exhibition.

Issues explored by these artists regarding race, place, and migration continue to be pressing for museums and institutions around the world.

Artists include Tia Blassingame, Mildred Beltre, Canute Caliste, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Frederick Schiller Cozzens, Jesus De La Rosa, Ruthann Godollei, Sheila Goloborotko, Rogelio Gutierrez, Antonio Jacobsen, Eddy A. L贸pez, Athos Menaboni, Ayanah Moor, Michelle Murillo, Grace Rosario Perkins, Robert Sherer, Bernice Sims, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Keith Smith, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. 

 

Looming Chaos

January 25 - July 26, 2020

Curator: TK Smith

Take a .

Looming Chaos is a solo exhibition of artist Zipporah Camille Thompson that explores her use of weaving to engage ideas of chaos. The artist conceptualizes chaos as the consuming cyclical processes of life driven by a universal yearning for wholeness. Through object and material choice, Thompson materializes the destruction, disorder, and confusions of the world, weaving them into structure and order. Thompson鈥檚 weaving practice allows her to reconcile the deterioration of the environment, tumultuous personal histories, and the complexity of her own identity as fodder for creation. 

Zipporah Camille Thompson is a visual artist and sculptor based in Atlanta, Georgia. Thompson explores ritual and alchemical transformations through the unknown and through universals, including death, catastrophe, chaos, and the cosmos. Metamorphosed, shapeshifters and hybrid landscapes reflect various archaeological, psychological, and ecological perspectives, as well as a personal investigation of self and identity. She received her MFA from the University of Georgia and her BFA from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

View a of the exhibition Looming Chaos.

The exhibition is a cumulative project of the inaugural Tina Dunkley Curatorial Fellows at Clark Atlanta University (CAUAM). The multi-institutional, cross-regional curatorial fellowship is a collaborative project between Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, the Zuckerman Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Created by Dr. Maurita Poole (CAUAM), the fellowship is meant to foster the next generation of museum professionals.

Image Courtesy of the Zuckerman Museum of Art, photo by Mike Jensen.

 

UNBOUND

January 25 - July 26, 2020

Curator: Nzinga Simmons

Take a . 

UNBOUND brings together a multigenerational group of artists whose work takes an inventive and experimental approach to abstraction. Using Kobena Mercer鈥檚 definition of 鈥榙iscrepant abstraction鈥� 鈥� hybrid and partial, elusive and repetitive, obstinate and strange, including almost everything that does not neatly fit into the institutional narrative of abstract art as a monolithic quest for purity, UNBOUND pushes against parameters of an imagined black aesthetic that relies on figural representation, disrupts notions of purity associated with abstraction, and widens the boundaries of painting to include forms and materials not traditionally associated with the medium. Rooted in the formal, the works consider the essential elements of abstract painting: color, form, gesture, line, and space, through unorthodox use of materials that break the confines of a rectangular canvas, and implode the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation. The works on view hang, stretch, tether, and dangle off the walls, breaking free from the bounds of figuration, and complicating the boundaries of painting itself.

Artists include: Anthony Akinbola, Romare Bearden, Krista Clark, Sam Gilliam, Eric N. Mack, Joe Overstreet, and Tariku Shiferaw.

The exhibition is a cumulative project of the inaugural Tina Dunkley Curatorial Fellows at Clark Atlanta University (CAUAM). The multi-institutional, cross-regional curatorial fellowship is a collaborative project between Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, the Zuckerman Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Created by Dr. Maurita Poole (CAUAM), the fellowship is meant to foster the next generation of museum professionals.

Image courtesy of the Clark Atlanta University Museum of Art.

 

it's your world for the moment

August 29 - December 6, 2020

 

The group exhibition it's your world for the moment brought rare and never-been-seen work of historical and cultural significance to the Southeast while also supporting the commissioning of new work made within our region. The precariousness of our geographic and shared spaces was explored through 鈥榚nvironmental portraits鈥�, explorations into ecological sites, and art-making tactics that incorporate cultural and symbolic meanings of both our natural and cultural spaces. Each artist featured in this exhibition has inexhaustibly created works of art uniquely positioned in the present while having a simultaneous relationship with the past and future. Their work collectively engages concepts of water and land in all of its complexity and precariousness, while rigorously engaging ideas of our climate and shared geography. Each artist included has explored our lived human experience here on Earth. 

Featured artists: Allison Janae Hamilton, Yoshua Ok贸n, Erin Jane Nelson, Ana Mendieta, and Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio (Lauren Bon, Rich Nielsen, and Tristan Duke).

The group exhibition it's your world for the moment brought rare and never-been-seen work of historical and cultural significance to the Southeast while also supporting the commissioning of new work made within our region. The precariousness of our geographic and shared spaces was explored through 鈥榚nvironmental portraits鈥�, explorations into ecological sites, and art-making tactics that incorporate cultural and symbolic meanings of both our natural and cultural spaces. Each artist featured in this exhibition has inexhaustibly created works of art uniquely positioned in the present while having a simultaneous relationship with the past and future. Their work collectively engages concepts of water and land in all of its complexity and precariousness, while rigorously engaging ideas of our climate and shared geography. Each artist included has explored our lived human experience here on Earth. 

Featured artists: Allison Janae Hamilton, Yoshua Ok贸n, Erin Jane Nelson, Ana Mendieta, and Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio (Lauren Bon, Rich Nielsen, and Tristan Duke).

Read KSU Professor Elizabeth Giddens' essay about Erin Jane Nelson and the ideas that motivate her work:

Ecocritic Elizabeth Giddens interviewed Erin Jane Nelson in her studio in February 2020. They discussed Nelson鈥檚 concerns about how climate change is affecting human communities as well as the natural world. Nelson shared her intellectual and intuitive approach to several pieces in the ZMA show It鈥檚 your world for the moment. She also described features of her technique such as hapa-zome printing.In her essay Solastalgizing the Georgia Coast, Giddens interprets Nelson鈥檚 practice through the lens of ecocriticism and highlights the themes of solastalgia, anthropomorphism, and posthumanism that emerge from her sculptures, collages, and wall panels. Access the essay . It is also available on Giddens鈥� .

Image: Erin Jane Nelson, Jekyll, 2018. Image courtesy of the artist and the Zuckerman Museum of Art. 

SDGs in it's your world for the moment

In collaboration with CIFAL Atlanta, a former center housed in KSU's , the ZMA identified ways that the art in it's your world for the moment corresponds to Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations.

Please see the document below for more information.

Cloud Chamber

December 3 - 15, 2019

Curator: Ginger Wolfe-Suarez

Cloud Chamber is a group exhibition of textile work in the Melinda Jolley Mortin Galleries at ZMA,. Concepts in this group exhibition include the relationship between handcraft, technology, and intergenerational exchange.

Artists include: Libs Elliott, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Jess Jones, and Amanda Ross-Ho.

Painting Who?

August 24 - December 15, 2019

Curator: Teresa Bramlette Reeves

Painting Who? is a small exhibition that focuses on paintings that take on a personality of their own. They occupy real space and also demonstrate the illusion of space. They consciously, unapologetically, and simultaneously refer to the history of painting, the act of making a painting, and the contemporary world. In this layered and loaded territory, they reflect both the past and the present.

Asking the question 鈥淲ho is this painting?鈥� rather than 鈥淲hat is this painting about?鈥� opens up the possibility of considering the object as a complex character in a larger narrative. It allows the gallery to be interpreted as a theatrical space in which stories are played out and plots are thickened. On this big white stage, relationships between the paintings can be explored and personalities can be assigned. This approach applies action to a group of otherwise static objects and it emphasizes the role of the gallery environment. But most importantly, it gives us a different way to think about painting, an alternative lens through which to read and interpret what we see.

Artists include: Jeff Conefry, Moira Dryer, Gracie Devito, Chris Hood, and Wihro Kim

Fruitful Labors

August 24 - November 10, 2019

Curator: Kerstie Tepper

Fruitful Labors focuses on strategies for coping.  Ranging from the absurd to the essential, these tactics include conversation, repetitive labor, intergenerational storytelling, and healing practices. Each of these approaches relies on a particular belief system.

Stanya Kahn, who is represented in this project with two videos, is an observer of life who offers wry, off-the-cuff commentary on failure and responsibility.  Lenka Clayton鈥檚 sculptural work also ponders responsibility through the investment of unnecessary, yet poetic labor. Through disassembly, alteration, and reassembly her objects of clothing consider use and misuse of human and machine.  Kaitlynn Redell鈥檚 photographic series, Not Her(e), falls within the sphere of the domestic labor where she directly addresses the invisibility in her constancy and support through a contemporary rendition of Victorian photography techniques.

Shana Moulton takes the idea of invisibility in the direction of the imaginary.  Her assumed character, Cynthia, receives messages from household objects that lead her to the Galactic Pot Healer for restoration. Equally mysterious, Michelle Laxalt refers to the power that can be invested in small objects and repeated behaviors.  In her sculptural installations, the artist references her grandmother鈥檚 superstitions鈥攍ong held beliefs that remain intact despite more orthodox forms of religious training.  Shanequa Gay explores the contemporary relevance of an ancient world of rites, practices, and sisterhood that she visualizes in multiple media. The photographs in this show depict women who unapologetically confront and adopt various archetypes as they embody deities of the artist鈥檚 creation.

Artists include: Lenka Clayton, Shanequa Gay, Stanya Kahn, Michelle Laxalt, Shana Moulton, and Kaitlynn Redell.

Sonya Yong James: One Hundred Blossoms and the Sweetest Scent

August 25, 2018 - December 20, 2019

Curator: Sarah Higgins

Sonya Yong James鈥� year-long solo exhibition on the ZMA stairwell project wall, One Hundred Blossoms and the Sweetest Scent is a large-scale mixed-media installation.

Taking inspiration from the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, artist Sonya Jong James weaves together fiber, flowers, roots, and found objects to explore the themes of this fable and their evolution over time. She says, 鈥淭he girl and wolf inhabit a place, call it the forest or the human psyche, where the spectrum of human sagas converges, and their social and cultural meanings play out.鈥�

Louder than Words

February 2 鈥� May 5, 2019

Curator: Teresa Bramlette Reeves

This exhibition features artists who, in a variety of ways, privilege silence, non-linguistic sounds, symbols, and gestures over words as tools of communication. Within the often-performative space of their work, they may surrender their own power in order to shine a light on the condition of powerlessness. They may use their bodies to convey complex emotions or simulate sensations that focus your experience. Some, who work within the imposed condition of deafness, reveal the gaps inherent in communication鈥攚hat is missing, misunderstood, intentionally ignored, or entirely invented. An emphasis on action over words reveals an opportunity for silent protest, suggesting the possibility of fearlessness in the nonverbal. In other work, sounds and words are muted, restricted, and undermined. The loss of this information is then made palpable, drawing attention to questions of intention and what this choice may mean socially or politically.

Sahwha/Resurgence

February 2 鈥� May 5, 2019

Curator: Joe Thomas

In observation of the KSU鈥檚 Year of Morocco in 2020-21, the ZMA presents Sahwha/Resurgence: works by Hicham Berrada. Originally trained as a scientist in Morocco, the work of Paris-based artist Hicham Berrada exposes the beauty that can result from disruptive interactions. Represented in this exhibition by six video works, these collisions of chemicals in solution or man-made interventions in the environment create an efflorescence鈥攐r rebirth鈥攊nto something new, a quality conveyed by the Arabic word sahwha. The resulting dreamlike visions represent a resurgence of something mundane or unappreciated into something eerily beautiful.

• Tomashi Jackson: Interstate Love Song
• Sarah Emerson: Are We the Monsters
• Time Like the Present
• Class Pictures
• Figure Forward

• 肉肉传媒 State鈥檚 1st Biennial National Arts Program Exhibition
• Medium
• Racecar
• Gut Feelings
• EPIC: Selections from the SGC
• International Collection
• Tori Tinsley: Hug on Redtop

• Transitions: States of Being
• Sleight of Hand
• A View Beyond the Trees
• Punc't
• Art AIDS America