Karen Comer Lowe has spent greater than twenty years shaping how audiences expertise Black artwork in and from the American South, and her curatorial path has taken her from the Smithsonian Establishment’s Nationwide Portrait Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Artwork to the Tubman African American Museum, earlier than returning to her hometown of Atlanta. After finishing her tenure as curator-in-residence on the Spelman Museum of Fantastic Arts, she now works independently, advising collectors and organizing exhibitions that reimagine the connection between Southern historical past and up to date artwork.
Lowe summarizes her curatorial follow as “elevating southern Black diaspora narratives.” However when requested to elaborate on the framework behind her method, her reply is complicated. “My previous exhibitions are an instance of my dedication to curating with viewers activation in thoughts, not simply viewers presentation,” she tells Observer. “I goal to steadiness format analysis with intuitive spatial placement that feels welcoming and inclusive. Wall texts that invite questions, efficiency moments that animate installations and even participatory components that allow guests shift the exhibition as they transfer by means of it. On this means, my curatorial method elevates with out distancing. It offers a number of entry factors, whereas taking guests on a path by means of sound, ritual and materials philosophy.”
Deciding on solely 5 artists from a area as wealthy and diversified (and geographically huge) because the South is a virtually inconceivable activity, however Lowe’s curatorial philosophy made the alternatives clear. When requested about her choice course of, she explains that each one 5 artists emerged from Southern geographies and Black narrative frameworks, but deliver a definite sensory mode. “Benjamin composes coloration as sound; Shiny frames protest as portraiture; Barnes maps reminiscence onto materials; Harris archives gathering areas by means of indicators and other people; German animates grief, hope, and resistance into ritual sculptures. What they share is a dedication to visibility, re-memory and generational transmission.”
These are the artists dwelling and dealing within the American South she sees as key voices within the area:
