The Lens

Excavated: From Soil to Stars examines land as a keeper of memory. In the fields of Maysville, Kentucky, and under the stars above, a weathered wood building stood witness to a 190-year-old history. A short film directed by Emmy Award-winning director Alphonzo J. Wesson traces the journey of the sun as it rises and falls over the crops of Maysville and the land upon which a slave pen once stood. That slave pen, carefully excavated and now on display in the Grand Hall of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, provides testimony of a wicked past.

Probate inventory records... Continue reading Alphonzo Wesson: Excavated: From Soil to Stars

Call Me When You Get Home is a body of work drawing from Marissa Nicole Stewart's relationships with the women in her family. It explores the place-making practices and generational worldbuilding that occur within a Black matriarchal household while also celebrating self-constructed identity.

The exhibition seizes fleeting moments, brings forward deeply ingrained memories, and challenges photographic tradition with an experiential eye. The exhibition’s rich images of Black women are revealed in black-bordered prints, allowing the work to sink into the space and envelop the viewer. These flow into the matriarch of the family, the... Continue reading Marissa Nicole Stewart: Call Me When You Get Home

The highly skilled and imaginative work of photographic artist Kimball Derrick, which has lain dormant for 40 years, takes center stage in My Book of Life—The Preface, a 50-year survey of Derrick’s work. He is a nationally recognized residential designer and cabinet maker who for decades has diligently captured images of nature and the world around him, reflecting a reverence for the beauty and spirituality that can be discovered in nature. My Book of Life—The Preface invites audiences to explore the backstory of this artist’s life and experience his artistic vision, which has for so long been kept out of public... Continue reading Kimball Derrick: My Book of Life—The Preface

In contemporary society, self-portraiture is an act of reclamation and a declaration of selfhood. Through the use of photography, video, and sculpture, four artists find their voices and express the complexities of their life experiences. Their approach to imagining the self is multifaceted and involves more than just depictions of a physical body; their portraits are reflections of the ancestral stories, cultural traditions, and modern realities that shape their identity.

Through the intimate act of turning the camera towards themselves, they invite the viewer to reflect and bear witness to their existence. This exhibition is a mode of self-discovery,... Continue reading as it was meant to be told: AAPI Artists on Selfhood and Belonging

Not so many years ago, people stopped touching photographs. While print media and brick-and-mortar galleries exist, the common, everyday experience with photographs has drastically shifted from handling prints to scrolling through digital images on a screen. These photographs are easily created, manipulated, and shared, but at a cultural level the sense of intimacy and preciousness that comes with holding an image has been lost.

CORPUS reminds us that a photograph exists in the world, accumulating the history that sticks to all things that take up space. It aims to investigate photographs that re-engage the body, acknowledge their place in... Continue reading CORPUS: Exploring the Power of the Physical Photograph