Exhibitions
Begonia Labs
The Begonia | Catalyst exhibition series celebrates the life and practice of pioneering but under-recognized artists.
James Kuol Makuac:
my heart is strong because I walked on blistered feet
On view September 24–November 15, 2024
Begonia Labs, Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice (EADJ)
my heart is strong because I walked on blistered feet features the vibrant and expressive paintings of James Kuol Makuac (b. South Sudan, 1976; lives in Nashville) whose work reflects a life spent navigating between worlds. For nearly twenty years, Makuac has cultivated a practice of contemporary Sudanese painting that tells impossible stories of human tragedy and simultaneously speaks to survival and hope, grief and joy, surrender and determination.
About the Artist
James Kuol Makuac (b. South Sudan, 1976; lives in Nashville) has nurtured an art practice of contemporary Sudanese painting for the past twenty years. As one The Lost Boys of Sudan, young men who resettled in the U.S. as refugees of war, his vibrant and expressive paintings often bridge the culture of the South Sudanese people and his American life. His work has been shown in local and traveling exhibitions, including Lending Library, Metro Arts Commission and Nashville Public Library, Our Directional Light, Leu Gallery, Belmont University, and Life Before, University School of Nashville. His paintings are in public and private collections such as The Tennessee State Museum, Tyson Foods, and the Nashville Convention Center. Makuac, who speaks several languages, including Dinka, Arabic, Swahili, and Spanish, works as a translator at Tyson Foods. In 2020, he was selected as one of Nashville’s Most Fascinating People by Nashville Lifestyles Magazine.
The Begonia | Catalyst exhibition series celebrates the life and practice of pioneering but under-recognized artists. The exhibition is curated by Grace Aneiza Ali, EADJ Curator with curatorial assistance from Simon Tatum and Danielle Myers.
Partner Exhibitions
Beverly Buchanan, Out of Control, 1991. Scrapbook, Beverly Buchanan papers, 1912–2017, bulk 1970s–90s.
Beverly Buchanan: I Broke the House
On view September 25, 2024–March 1, 2025
Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery, Fisk University
Courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Fisk University Galleries is pleased to present Beverly Buchanan: I Broke the House at the Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery on view from September 25, 2024 to March 1, 2025. This exhibition originated at ETH Zurich and offers a comprehensive exploration of Beverly Buchanan’s (1940–2015) diverse body of work. It features sculpture, painting, photography, drawing, writing, and printed material.
I Broke the House brings together a wide range of contemporary voices, artworks, and historical contexts. It critically engages with Buchanan’s exploration of the built environment, addressing themes of race, memory, and resistance. The exhibition emphasizes Buchanan’s ability to challenge traditional exhibition practices by reimagining the spaces that hold her work. Through her focus on eroded surfaces, vernacular dwellings, and marginalized histories, Buchanan provides a poignant commentary on the sociopolitical landscape of her time.
Curated in collaboration with GTA exhibitions at ETH Zurich, the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice (EADJ), and Fisk University, this exhibition project builds on the earlier presentation at ETH Zurich in the spring of 2024. That iteration of I Broke the House involved contributions from a range of artists and scholars, including Elena Bally, Jennifer Burris, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Aria Dean, Fredi Fischli, Jack Halberstam, Harvard University GSD students, Alicia Henry, Anna Gritz, Tonja Khabir, Parity Group, Prudence Lopp, Park McArthur, Devin T. Mays, Ana Mendieta, Siddhartha Mitter, Kazuko Miyamoto, Senga Nengudi, Niels Olsen, Sarah Richter, Cameron Rowland, Jamaal Sheats, Adam Szymczyk, and the Tubman African American Museum in Macon.
This collaborative project is an exploratory exercise, as Siddhartha Mitter describes it, in “thinking with” Beverly Buchanan’s practice and legacy. The presentation at Fisk includes objects from the permanent collection and archive. As part of this ongoing project, Haus am Waldsee in Berlin will also host a future exhibition inspired by Buchanan’s work, continuing the dialogue around her impact on contemporary art, particularly her connection to the American South.
https://www.fiskuniversitygalleries.org/current-exhibitions-1
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María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold
On view September 26, 2024–January 5, 2025
Frist Art Museum
María MagdalenaCampos-Pons: Behold includes over three decades of the artist’s work in photography, installation, video, painting, and performance. Hauntingly beautiful and emotionally charged, Behold shows how Campos-Pons’s layered identity as a Cuban woman with ancestral roots in the Yoruba culture of West Africa as well as in Spain and China inform her multimedia, sensorial artworks. Evoking the history of diaspora, displacement, and migration, as well as labor and race, and motherhood and spirituality, Behold invites us to join with the artist in the vital search for meaning and connectivity.
https://fristartmuseum.org/exhibition/maria-magdalena-campos-pons/
About the Artist
María Magdalena Campos-Pons is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair Professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University. In addition to her practice as an artist and professor, she has made a significant contribution to the larger art world and to Tennessee through her ongoing program Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice, which brings together scholars, critics, and artists from around the world in virtual seminars and physical artist interventions. She was the consulting curator for the 2023 Tennessee Triennial, a statewide series of exhibitions addressing the theme of “Re-Pair”—art as a means of healing a broken society. In 2023, Campos-Pons was named a MacArthur Fellow in recognition of her groundbreaking synthesis of cultures and mediums in advocating for art’s capacity to heal individuals and society.
This exhibition is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition is curated by Carmen Hermo, former Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum and Mazie Harris, Associate Curator, Department of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum with Jenée-Daria Strand, former Curatorial Associate, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.