The art department at the College of Charleston devotes a generous portion of its ground floor on Calhoun Street to gallery space. Rotating exhibits of art and film are mounted here, as are free lectures. Past exhibits include a wide-ranging photography show about all aspects of life in the South. This is serious art curation—many of the Halsey’s exhibits go on to tour galleries around the country.

What does it mean when informational text is cut into pieces, tossed in the air and reassembled on canvas? How does it feel to enter a gallery and encounter empty pesticide bottles, painted in glittery gold and piled on top of one another like a sculpture? Kirsten Stolle – part visual artist, part historian and part archaeologist – creates art that inspires questions.

In this episode of Speaking of … College of Charleston, CofC’s official podcast, Katie Hirsch, director and chief curator at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, speaks with Stolle, whose exhibition Only You Can Prevent a Forest, is on view at the Halsey through Dec. 10, 2022. The exhibit explores the global influence of chemical companies on our food supply and their efforts to downplay the effects of their products on our health and the environment.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this old adage merely scratches the surface regarding the power of art. Art has the potential for profound impact. It can stimulate emotions. It can communicate. Amuse. Astound. Inspire. And educate. Something so versatile is surely an invaluable resource, and that’s exactly how the directors of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston see their work.

Last winter, this group decided to implement a new pilot program using the first exhibit of 2022 – Dyani White Hawk’s Hear Her. The concept, dubbed “Drive-by Discussions,” was simple: invite a handful of professors to bring their students to the gallery, have them take in the exhibit and then immediately afterward use that experience to spark discussion in the classroom.

The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston School of the Arts announces the upcoming exhibition, Kirsten Stolle: Only You Can Prevent A Forest for fall 2022. This exhibition will be on view at the Halsey Institute from Friday, August 26th to Saturday, December 10th, 2022. An opening reception is set for Friday, August 26th from 6:30 pm to 8 pm.

The Halsey Institute’s open hours are Monday – Saturday 11 am to 4 pm and 11 am to 7 pm on Thursdays, and the galleries are open to the public with free admission.

Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez is a Colombian-American artist who captures through her works the curious and intense experience of having emigrated from her country of origin and still having a part of herself rooted in Colombia. 

She is currently creating a feminist visual novel composed of paintings, sculptures, objects, and mixed media that together represent a synchronicity of dialogues, passages, and punctuations about hybridity and cultural ownership.

An insider’s take on one of two Halsey exhibits on view through mid-July.

Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez tells stories of our shared global histories through her artwork. She explores our world through the material culture left from generations past — seeking portals between then and now in an effort to understand who we’ve become through who we’ve been. Casta Paintings is no exception to this keen interest of the ways in which people shape identities. Individuals build a sense of self with familial and collective experiences influenced by and in resistance to cultural identity. The power structures that shape cultural identity are inherently imbalanced, and thus often perpetuate stereotypes. 

The identity of a country and its people should come from culture and traditions born from within, but often the organic nature of who we are is bent by outside forces that encroach with different values and norms.

Two new exhibits opening May 13, 2022, at the College of Charleston’s Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art will explore such themes of culture and oppression, with both Kukuli Velarde’s CORPUS and Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez’ Pinturas de Casta and the Construction of American Identity addressing the legacy of South American colonialism.

According to Katie Hirsch, the Halsey’s director and chief curator, “Kukuli and Nancy both tackle a subject that is at once deeply complicated and very simple – that colonialism is not a static moment in time with a clear beginning and end.”

The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston will open two new exhibitions on May 13, Kukuli Velarde: CORPUS and Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez: Pinturas de Casta and the Construction of American Identity. 

Made up of fifteen sculptures and banners, Velarde’s CORPUS speaks to and wrestles with Peru’s colonial past and mestizo identity. Velarde has crafted indigenous entities that have been a part of Peruvian culture despite being overwritten by European Catholic mythologies. These entities were not lost to the culture war, but cleverly hidden inside the iconography of the settlers. Peruvian-American Velarde is based in Philadelphia and works in the mediums of ceramic, painting, drawing and installation.