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.

The opening reception for the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art’s 37th annual Young Contemporaries exhibition is 5–7 p.m. on Friday, March 18, 2022, at the Halsey Institute, 161 Calhoun Street. The event is free and open to the public.

Juried by New Orleans–based visiting artist Ron Bechet, Young Contemporaries 2022 represents the brightest talents from across the College – including painters, sculptors, printmakers and photographers majoring in everything from public health to studio art to marine biology. The students get the opportunity not only to have their work chosen by a nationally prominent juror and exhibit in a professional gallery setting, but also to prepare for future gallery exhibits and practice the type of professionalism necessary for success in such a competitive field.

Consider the work of Dyani White Hawk, an Minneapolis-based artist of Sicangu Lakota, German and Welsh ancestry, who draws from her Native culture in her work. Her work is the subject of an exhibition at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, “Dyani White Hawk: Hear Her,” on view through Feb. 26.

Here’s the thing. With White Hawk, we can’t know those stories. Why? Because we don’t understand what they are saying. White Hawk’s work immerses viewers in the worlds of Native women by way of the distinct language of each Indigenous woman’s nation.

Curator’s take on Native American artist Dyani White Hawk’s exhibit at the College of Charleston’s Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art.

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Dyani White Hawk’s work illuminates the lived experiences of Native Peoples. With her video, photography, and works in other media, she aims to use the language of visual art to bring light to the deep chasm between our understanding of history and the truth. Her work weaves together forms from the canon of Western art along with the visual languages and traditions of Native Peoples. In doing so, her work spotlights Native women, whose strength and fortitude throughout centuries of colonization have helped their peoples’ languages and cultures survive.