South Arts’ 2024 Southern Prize and State Fellowships Exhibition

The City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs presents South Arts’ 2024 Southern Prize and State Fellowships Exhibition, on view June 27-August 3, 2025 at City Gallery. City Gallery will host a reception on Friday, June 17 from 5:00-7:00 p.m.; it is free and open to the public.

South Arts’ 2024 Southern Prize and State Fellowships Exhibition is a touring exhibition of the award and fellowship recipients. SouthArts, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is a nonprofit regional arts organization whose mission is to empower artists, organizations, and committees and to increase access to arts and culture. Since 2017, its Southern Prize & State Fellowship Program has recognized and awards direct financial support to some of the top contemporary artists in the region. A State Fellowship is awarded to an artist from the nine Southern states (Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina), and a second jury selects the Southern Prize finalists and winner.

This is the fifth year that South Arts has established a touring exhibition for the program. Shannon Lindsay acted as curator for this year’s exhibition; she is Associate Lecturer and Gallery Director for the University of Central Florida.The 2024 SouthArts State Fellowship cohort in this exhibition includes: Antony (Tony) M. Bingham, Alabama; Nelson Gutierrez, Tennessee; Robyn Moore, Kentucky; Zipporah Camille Thompson, Georgia; Isys Hennigar, North Carolina; Brooke P. Alexander Mississippi; Macon Reed, Louisiana; and Charles Clary, South Carolina. Antony (Tony) M. Bingham is the winner of the 2024 Southern Prize.

Words from curator Shannon Lindsey:

Artists based in the American South, either by origin or relocation, express our identities, experiences, hardships, and joys visually and unapologetically. The nine 2024 South Arts Southern Prize State Fellows for Visual Arts are no exception. They use a variety of mediums and processes to express their identity, culture, environment, and build their own constructs or subvert constructs they have been placed historically and within the contemporary landscape. These artists actively explore a variety of concepts including: referencing and examining complex histories and oppression, reinterpreting their environments and relationships, navigating real and imagined spaces; but all fiercely advocate for their individuality and collective communities.

The 2024 Southern Prize and State Fellowships for Visual Arts exhibition continues the rich history of the program’s celebration of diversity in media, subject matter, and conceptual investigations. This year’s prize fellows explore traditional materials through contemporary processes including photography, sculpture, painting, ceramics, installation, mixed media, and sound components to negotiate and confront their individual identities and give visibility to the invisible or overlooked.

So, how do we define “Southerness?” It is difficult to narrow down a specific definition due to our beautifully worn tapestry woven with diverse cultures and traditions, but also latent with hardship, invisibilities, and oppression. However, our shared characteristics of persistence, resourcefulness, and determination despite all odds are inherent in our shared Southern experiences. The South Arts organization and the 2024 South Arts Southern Prize State Fellows for Visual Arts exemplify “Southerness” through their ambitious and dynamic celebration and examination of individual and cultural identities within regional, national, and global contexts.