South Arts 2021 Southern Prize and State Fellows Exhibition

 

The City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs presents the South Arts 2021 Southern Prize and State Fellows Exhibition, a touring exhibition of the award and fellowship recipients. South Arts, 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 third year that South Arts has established a touring exhibition for the program, and the late Wim Roefs, acted as curator for this year’s exhibition. A noted curator and visual arts professional in South Carolina, Roefs was co-founder and board member of 701 Center for Contemporary Art and owner of if ART Gallery, both in Columbia, SC.

From Wim Roefs, curator:

Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick speak of “dignity, beauty, and strength.” Tameca Cole aims for
“a better future,” and Marielle Plaisir thinks of her “imagined ideal of utopia without oppression.” Raheleh Filsoofi’s challenge of how we view “others” and Ming Ying Hong’s of stereotypes related to the body imply hope. Joyce Garner’s “allegory of people coming together around a table” does, too, as does the confidence that exudes from Myra Greene’s rhapsody on the “beautiful blend of complex information” that is the color brown. Fletcher Williams III focuses on “our desire to establish a home and self” within the South, while Jewel Ham sees her reclaiming of African Americans’ “time, spaces and histories” as an “act of resistance.”

The good news in dire times is, then, that a defeatist bunch they ain’t, the 2021 South Arts State Fellows. And dire times they are. The earth burns and floods all at once, while science deniers deny and monied interests whistle to the tune of après moi, le déluge. Citizens of color are killed by police and others, but now in plain, recorded view. Alternative facts, internalized fiction and doublespeak beat Orwell at his game. Some pandemic politics present protective masks as shackles of totalitarian rule. If it seems that humanity quickly is becoming irredeemable or its demise, irreversible, the South Arts artists didn’t get the memo or haven’t resigned themselves to such a fate.

This doesn’t mean these artists are naïve or wide-eyed optimists; it’s the very recognition of issues and problems that is the impetus for their work. And they push back, providing hope that improvement and reversal remain possible. Such engagement is no surprise; most of the artists have first-hand experience with issues surrounding race, ethnicity, identity, belonging, colonialism and gender – and typically not as members of dominant groups. Of the nine artists, three were born abroad; Hong was born in China but raised in Los Angeles, Filsoofi is from Iran, and Plaisir was born in France and has roots in Guadeloupe. Of the American-born artists, all but Garner are African American.

As in previous years, few of this year’s Southern Prize artists are concerned with specific “Southern” issues. Only Williams explicitly engages the American South. Cole’s starting points are experiences in her native South, as are those of Calhoun and McCormick. But the issues they address aren’t strictly regional, which is true as well for native Southerners Ham and Garner. The other artists are not native Southerners. As a group, the 2021 South Arts Fellows bring multiple identities to the table, individually and combined.

City Gallery will be open July 15th through August 28th from noon until 5pm.

2021 Southern Prize & State Fellowship Recipients

Tameca Cole, 2021 Alabama Fellow

Raheleh Filsoofi, 2021 Tennessee Fellow

Joyce Garner, 2021 Kentucky Fellow

Myra Greene, 2021 Georgia Fellow

Jewel Ham, 2021 North Carolina Fellow

Ming Ying Hong, 2021 Mississippi Fellow

Keith Calhoun & Chandra McCormick, 2021 Louisiana Fellow

Marielle Plaisir, 2021 Florida Fellow & Southern Prize Winner

Fletcher Williams III, 2021 South Carolina & Southern Prize Finalist