October 5, 12:00pm – 1:30pm
Poet Harris Wheeler, Lexington, KY, accompanied by Musicians James Meade and Gabriel Napoli respond to exhibition themes from Southern Democratic through a performance under The Carnegie’s rotunda.
Southern Democratic is a Featured Project in the 2024 FotoFocus Biennial: backstories. Now in its seventh iteration, the Biennial activates over 100 projects at museums, galleries, universities, and public spaces throughout Greater Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky in October 2024—the largest of its kind in America. The backstories theme focuses on stories that are not evident at first glance. They offer context for what happened previously or out of view, providing narratives not yet told or presented from a new perspective. Once told, they shed light on current circumstances.
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Southern Democratic is an exhibition of meditative vignettes, each featuring a specific body of work by an artist actively examining the changing world. The works are presented in dialogue with Election Eve, highlighting continued interest in concepts of place, life in the South, and uncanny imagery of the everyday. Nearly 50 years later, the United States is on the precipice of another consequential presidential election, one that has the possibility to dramatically alter our collective futures across the region and beyond. It is the artists whose, often quiet, observations articulated through the lens of words, photographs, films, paintings, and sculpture succeed in truly seeing change––for better or for worse––as it is lived.
Not unlike Eggleston, artists Tag Christof, Casey Joiner, and Claudia Keep translate the quotidian; while Coulter Fussell, Y. Malik Jalal, and Polo Silk work in lineages of Southern craft to illuminate social cycles. John Chae and Carey Gough meditate on the past and future of Southern land, whereas Rose Marie Cromwell and Dawn DeDeaux focus specifically on environmental concerns. Albert Moser and Louis Zoellar Bickett work with taxonomies and repetition to illuminate and track; while Amy Pleasant’s figures provide relief and inherent potential, suggesting that our destinies are not fixed.
Artists: Louis Zoellar Bickett, John Chae, Tag Christof, Rose Marie Cromwell, Dawn DeDeaux, William Eggleston, Carey Gough, Claudia Keep, Coulter Fussell, Y. Malik Jalal, Casey Joiner, Albert Moser, Amy Pleasant, Polo Silk, Viva Vadim
