Calendar

Atlanta Contemporary Art Center is pleased to announce the artists participating in the Studio Artist Program Retrospective Group Show. With a roster of 20 multigenerational, multicultural and multidisciplinary female artists – She Is Here intentionally defies existing norms for art institutions where recognition and inclusion of women is underwhelming. She Is Here fosters women working with women, and women supporting women.

The Artists were selected from alumni and existing participants from the Studio Artist Program (2001-2020) in sync with the organizational shift from Nexus to Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. The artists and art selection unfolded organically. Common themes blossom and intertwine. Each artist plants her seed in the collective garden, where impressions of identity, femininity, home, motherhood, mothering, domesticity, spirituality, ritual, body image, aging and interconnectedness reappear and overlap.

Testament: Danny Lyon Photographs from the 1960s presents a selection of works from two of his early series: The Movement, a series documenting the civil rights movement in the South, taken while Lyon served as a staff photographer for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and Conversations with the Dead, a series of groundbreaking photographs taken over fourteen months spent documenting life inside the Texas penitentiary system.

Lyon fully immersed himself in the lives of those he photographed, becoming a demonstrator, advocate, witness, and friend. From memorializing heroic struggle to acknowledging the weight of living under the threat of erasure or simply being forgotten, these images reflect Lyon’s devotion, his belief in photojournalism as a vehicle of change, and his enduring commitment to bear witness.

Academy Award-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter is an expert storyteller who harnesses the power of visual communication to share narratives of culture, race, and politics. Creating costumes for generation-defining films like Black Panther, Selma, and Do the Right Thing, she brings vibrancy, nuance, color, and texture to each of her culture-shifting characters. Carter’s exhibition Afrofuturism in Costume Design at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion Film features unforgettable designs from nearly four decades of her career within an Afrofuturistic installation incorporating original artwork by SCAD alum Brandon Sadler, whose murals were prominently featured in Black Panther.

The Marietta Cobb Museum of Art presents a solo exhibition featuring Atlanta artist and Georgia State University MFA candidate, Melissa Huang (born 1992). Her dreamlike oil paintings, prints, sculptures, and video art explore digitally constructed bodies and identities. In her often self-referential artwork, Huang explores the multiplicity of identity. How one is perceived by others and the ways one presents oneself can change from person to person, situation to situation. Another Day Another Girl explores themes like personalities versus personas and technology and social media’s effects (both positive and negative) on the search for and establishment of identity.

A widely prolific artist, Albert Watson has photographed the most iconic images of our time, merging fashion photography, celebrity portraiture, and fine art. From Andy Warhol to Kate Moss to Hollywood royalty, Watson’s striking photographs have graced more than 100 covers of Vogue worldwide and elite publications such as TIME magazine, Rolling Stone, and Harper’s Bazaar.

The Light Behind the Lens, Watson’s first solo U.S. museum exhibition, features more than 50 works curated from his extensive photographic archive to showcase his distinctive style, expert use of light and shadow, and the wide range of his artistic career.

Wondrous Worlds: Art & Islam Through Time & Place explores the long history, vast geographic expanse, and remarkable diversity of works of art in the Islamic world. Organized by and drawn from the collections of The Newark Museum of Art, Wondrous Worlds features more than 100 works in nearly all media, including carpets, costumes, jewelry, ceramics, glassware, metalworks, prints, paintings, and photographs. Contemporary works from artists Rachid Koraichi and Victor Ekpuk, and calligrapher Hassan Massoudy are shown alongside works from as early as the ninth century. Highlights of the exhibition include dazzling lusterware from Iran and Spain, delicate prayer rugs from Turkey and India, a majestic pair of early-20th-century Egyptian applique tent hangings and Harem #1 by the Moroccan-American photographer Lalla Essaydi.

For more than six years, artist Courtney McClellan has studied the relationship between performance and the law. Her exploration centers on legal simulation intended to educate future attorneys. Art Historian Robert Blackson said, “Simulation is practice that leads to theory.” During trial simulation, students may play the role of lawyer, witness or judge. Their actions are theatrical and speculative.

Simulations is a photo installation that includes images of practice courtrooms at law schools throughout the American South. The series depicts spaces that are simultaneously courtroom, classroom, and theater. These sites even occasionally host the actual adjudication of law, for example a state appellate case. The images address the architecture of training, performance, agency, and power.