Curator-Led Tour of Southern Exigency – with Julia Park and colleagues
Tuesday, March 1, 2022, 11:30AM
Event Description:
Join curator Julia Park for a guided tour of the Anderson’s current exhibition Southern Exigency (on view through March 5th). Park, who co-curated the exhibition with colleagues Sakina Ahmad, Cate Duckwall, and Kayleigh MacDonald, will share insights, observations and experiences from the curatorial process, offering viewers unique perspectives on the exhibition, its artists and artworks. The tour is open to the public and light refreshments will be provided.
About the Exhibition:
The Anderson and VCUarts are pleased to present Southern Exigency, an exhibition of ten Atlanta artists, organized and curated by the students of the Fall 2021–Spring 2022 Applied Curatorial Practices class. Representing four distinct School of the Arts studio and academic majors, the four student members of the class have worked tirelessly over the past seven months to provide a glimpse into the power and promise of Atlanta, Georgia’s contemporary art scene.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Southern Exigency features ten Atlanta artists whose media-spanning works interrogate place, familial roots, memory, and physical land. Some works delve into the rich world of memories, often passing through portals and entering dreams or transformed realities. Others interrogate our relationship with the land and what we miss—or even look away from—that lies just under the surface. The power of storytelling coupled with radical vulnerability is evident throughout as each artist confronts themself and their environment, leading to the emergence of reborn narratives and deepened understandings.
Connected, the works compose a varied and rigorous picture in response to and in conversation with the exigencies of the contemporary American South. How do we trace the places we have been while defining the urgent demands of the present and future? How can we navigate ourselves through the unknown, making the process a practice? What radical arrival(s) might we meet and what might we heal along the way? Through a critical examination of roots, memories, and histories, the artists in Southern Exigency posit how we might move into complexity, make the invisible visible, and open ourselves to the fullness of time and place.