SOUTH ARTS EXHIBITION AT THE BO BARTLETT CENTER –

Human Hair From Two Sisters, Two Rattlesnake Tails

The first thing that caught my eye was the 25 ft. pile of furniture—painted purple and orange and stacked into a mountain against a far corner of the gallery.

Tufted, wingback chairs, plastic answering machines, and keyboards interspersed with shadeless lamps and colored lights. The piece was installed by artist, Brittany M. Watkins. She’s the 2022 South Carolina Fellow, one of nine on display at the Bo Bartlett Center until December tenth. In her artist statement, Watkins says she, “examines contemporary society through a lens of psychoanalysis, by deconstructing everyday objects, actions and experiences.” Her results, “invite viewers to enter the artwork as if stepping into a painting.”

These fellows were chosen from over 800 entrants, one for each state; Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Louisiana Fellow, Hannah Chalew is the Southern Prize winner. Her work explores what it means to live in a time of global warming, with particular focus on Southern Louisiana. In her artist’s statement, Chalew says her work, “connects fossil fuel extraction and plastic production to their roots in white supremacy and capitalism that have fueled the exploitation of people and the landscape from the times of colonization and enslavement.” Her piece, Tremblante, 2021, is a 72”x 48”x 60” sculpture of metal, sugarcane, lime, plastic, recycled paint, living plants, soil, paper made from sugarcane combined with shredded disposable plastic waste, (“plasticane”), iron oak gall ink and ink from shells. Chalew seeks to, “divest her studio practice from fossil fuels as much as possible,” by using, “recycled, free and sustainable materials.”

Gloria Gipson Suggs is the Mississippi Fellow. She was an educator for 20 years when she suffered an accident that severely limited her muscular function. In her statement, she says that she, “turned to art that she loved as a child.” Her style is primitive Impressionism. The media are crayon, pencils, markers, and pens on art paper and are inspired by the, “Civil War, Depression and Desegregation Eras, as passed down through folklore.” She attempts to reproduce the pigments made from plants, used by her ancestors. Her pieces are of a by-gone South. They’re illustrative of a divided land, but equally present in her work is a spirit of exultation, partly from the folkloric quality. But also, is easily lent by the media of bright crayon and primitive execution.

Alabama Fellow, Jenny Fine uses photography as element in her expansive installation. “Photographs as time, frozen,” according to her statement, “the camera is a device capable of shapeshifting memory—and the story—an apparition moving across time and space, resisting stillness and singularity.” Fine installed the piece herself, onsite. At the opening there was a performance within the installation that “collapsed the fourth wall.” It’s the largest piece in the show and feels like walking beneath the waves. Photographs and seashells are arranged to convey an ocean floor. The torso and legs of a gigantic mannequin are on one side and a billowing backdrop, moved by forced air creates the undulating sensation of water.

My most favorite is the work by Tennessee Fellow, Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo. According to her statement, Cornejo seeks to explore the “possibilities of hybridity.” “A place where humans have evolved into hybrid beings with animals, insects, and discarded human-made materials.”

She goes on to say, “The resulting physical evolution of this voluntary merging challenges social discomfort around bodies that are not easily categorized by blurring categories between animal and human, living and dead.” Brood, 2021, is a piece made of “Human hair from two sisters, two rattlesnake tails, epoxy, clay, sawdust wood glue, aluminum, acrylic paint and alcohol ink.”

It looks like a fat, rounded mink, with spikes of blonde hair and two rattlesnake tails protruding. Womb, 2021 looks like a big, sparkly geode. But it’s sculpted from epoxy, scrap fencing, saw dust and ants, among other things. It’s made to look like, “fruiting body of phallus indusiatus mushroom, (which may smell of rotting meat but some variations may be a female aphrodisiac that elicits spontaneous orgasms).” Her pieces seem almost gothic in their aesthetic, foreboding and forbidding.

Curator of the South Arts 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellows exhibition, Michaela Pilar Brown declares it “clear that Southern artists are continuing to record and examine the lived experience of the south but are deeply engaged in global issues.”

This show is remarkable in its beauty, not only of the construction and application of the many southern and human themes and materials, but also in the struggle of these fellows, wresting their ideas and experiences to interpret and convey our global and human conditions through their artistry.

The South Arts 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellows exhibit is on display at the Bo Bartlett Center until December 10, 2022.

By Mamie Pound