The Lens

Members of the performance collective Mute-N-Heard, organized by artist Michael Coppage in 2005, traveled the world and while painted green, walked silently through the streets as characters personifying their struggles: be it insecurities, racism, sexism, beauty standards, and/or mental health uses. The performance series sought to unburden members of the external pressures they had internalized. Humphrey Gets His Flowers is a combination of archival video, large-scale projection, mixed media collages, and photography. Returning to the tribe of mutes—Xelfer, Savage Gurl and Humphrey Humpkick—Michael Coppage analyzes how this practice led to a meaningful method to create impactful images and objects. Coppage... Continue reading Humphrey Gets His Flowers

Acknowledge Reveal Disclose is an exhibition of portrait photographs made by individuals from across the region who are active and passionate in their pursuit of photography. Many are not photographers by training or profession, and many have chosen to work in analog film processes. These individuals are part of an organically growing and highly energized community of picture-makers. The exhibition draws attention to and encourages the growth of that community.

Acknowledge Reveal Disclose aligns with the organization’s mission to encourage creative community. In its Community Gallery, the Fitton Center collaborates with area universities, schools, social service organizations, retirement communities,... Continue reading Acknowledge Reveal Disclose

The works in this exhibition address a range of topics, spanning performance and the body, climate change, power, colonialism and identity, heritage, and territory. Collectively, they portray complex and contested relationships humans have with notions of environment, wilderness, nature, and place. The "line" metaphor is an organizing principle as well as reference to the precarity of this moment: at serious risk; caught, captured; following the path of a line. The exhibition emphasizes photography, in all its forms, as delivering a special charge to document while also grappling with historical expectations, enlarged geographies, and contemporary urgencies. The photographic documentation of various artistic interventions... Continue reading On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith

‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory considers the historic and contemporary role that photography and film have played in remembering legacies of slavery and its aftermath and examines the social lives of Black Americans within various places including the land, at home, in photographic albums, at historic sites, and in public memory.

This exhibition acknowledges artists’ constant involvement with efforts to explore the possibilities of freedom and their relationship to it. Their quest to be ‘as free as they want to be’ is envisioned in the subject matter they explore as well as in their... Continue reading ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory

The Carnegie brings together five curators working inside and outside of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region to select and develop projects based on linking artists across different geographies. For the past several exhibition seasons, The Carnegie has explored curatorial models that prioritize the process of connecting artists with a range of curatorial voices that can provide new contexts for their work. These Things Are Connected continues that effort by inviting Esther Callahan, Matt Distel, Daniel Fuller, Cameron Granger and Tif Sigfrids to introduce artists from outside of this region to pair with artists closer to the Cincinnati/Covington area. Rather than relying on an... Continue reading These Things Are Connected