Free For All
GALLERY HOURS (during exhibitions)
Monday - Saturday, 11am – 4pm
Open Thursdays until 7pm

August 25 – December 9

La Vaughn Belle

WHEN THE LAND MEETS THE BODY

August 25 – December 9

La Vaughn Belle

WHEN THE LAND MEETS THE BODY

In this exhibition, La Vaughn Belle seeks to explore the relationship of history, land, and the bodies between them. When the Land Meets the Body will present a selection of existing work and new commissioned works inspired by the Lowcountry landscape. Through this process, Belle will consider the idea that who we are individually and collectively is a product of historical processes that are often represented in the landscape. Over the last decade, Belle’s work has been centered in decolonial art practices that challenge the narratives in colonial archives. With this project, she will weave biography and history to create interventions in historical sites and consider how landscapes and ecosystems are manipulated by those who live within them.

La Vaughn Belle

WHEN THE LAND MEETS THE BODY

August 25 – December 9
About the artist

La Vaughn Belle makes visible the unremembered. Borrowing from elements of architecture, history and archeology Belle creates narratives that challenge colonial hierarchies and invisibility. Belle explores the material culture of coloniality and her work presents countervisualities and narratives. Working in a variety of disciplines her practice includes: painting, installation, photography, writing, video and public interventions.

Belle’s work with colonial era pottery led to a commission with the renowned brand of porcelain products, the Royal Copenhagen. She has exhibited her work in the Caribbean, the USA and Europe in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio (NY), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), the Museum of the African Diaspora (CA) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (DK). Her art is in the collections of the National Photography Museum and the Vestsjælland Museum in Denmark. She is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies. The project was featured in over 100 media outlets around the world including the NY Times, Politiken, VICE, the BBC and Le Monde.

Belle holds an MFA from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba and an MA and BA from Columbia University in NY. She was a finalist for the She Built NYC project to develop a monument to memorialize the legacy of Shirley Chisholm and for the Inequality in Bronze project in Philadelphia to redesign one of the first monuments to an enslaved woman at the Stenton historic house museum. As a 2018-2020 fellow at the Social Justice Institute at the Barnard Research Center for Women at Columbia University she researched the “citizenless” Virgin Islanders in the Harlem Renaissance. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled Ledgers From A Lost Kingdom. Her studio is based in the Virgin Islands.

Learn more about La Vaughn Belle: lavaughnbelle.com

Free For All
GALLERY HOURS (during exhibitions)
Monday - Saturday, 11am – 4pm
Open Thursdays until 7pm
843.953.4422


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