Group Exhibition Featuring 19 YoungArts Award Winners Explores the Many Ideas of Blackness and Home
Opens in the YoungArts Gallery on April 7, 2022
Travels to The Tisch Gallery at NYU Fall 2022
MIAMI, FL (March 15, 2022) – YoungArts, the national foundation for the advancement of artists, presents Home: Reimagining Interiority, a new group exhibition that explores the significant ways Black visual narratives respond to the dynamic cultural, political, social, economic and intimate changes that have forced us to (re)interrogate previous conceptions of Blackness and home.
Featuring photographic and text-based artwork created against the backdrop of the pandemic, the artists, 20 YoungArts award winners across disciplines and generations, draw the viewer in to show the intimate and personal impact of larger social and political events that we are only beginning to understand.Co-curated by Dr. Joan Morgan and Dr. Deborah Willis,both directors at the NYU Institute of African American Affairs, Center for Black Visual Culture,the exhibition will be on view in the YoungArts Gallery in Miami from April 7 through August 1, 2022 and will then travel to The Department of Photography & Imaging, Tisch Gallery at NYU, where it will be on view throughout the fall 2022 semester. The first view on Thursday, April 7, 6—8:30 PM at YoungArts is free and open to the public with RSVP.
“The past two years have given us all so much to think about and process as we have been forced to renegotiate and navigate our relationship with the idea of ‘home’ and identity. Working with these artists, and seeing how they have come to understand their sense of self and home during these times has been an amazing experience,” said curators Dr. Willis and Dr. Morgan.
“YoungArts is proud to be partnering with the NYU Institute of African American Affairs and the extraordinary Dr. Willis and Dr. Morgan to present this exhibition, which highlights the work of YoungArts award winners spanning the past 16 years. We are delighted that this will be the first YoungArts exhibition to travel to New York, paving the way for this important artistic collaboration to reach a wider audience,” said Lauren Snelling, YoungArts Artistic Director.
Featured artists are Nina Osoria Ahmadi (2019 Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts), Priscilla Aleman (2009 Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts), Daveed Baptiste (2016 Photography & Visual Arts), Catherine Camargo (2017 Visual Arts), Eli Dreyfuss (2016 Photography), Glenn Espinosa (2016 Visual Arts), Phylicia Ghee (2006 Photography), Svet Jacqueline (2010 Photography), Carlos Hernandez (2019 Photography), Kayla Hunt (2018 Writing), Jessica Kim (2022 Writing), Ava Kinsey (2004 Writing & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts), Dez Levier (2022 Writing), Zayira Ray (2018 Photography), Coralina Rodriguez Meyer (2000 Visual Arts), Ackeem Salmon (2016 Photography & 2017 Visual Arts), Saint Samuel (2022 Photography), Cornelius Tulloch (2016 Design Arts & Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts), Triniti Wade (2018 Writing), and Nadia Wolff (2016 Design Arts & Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts).
Home: Reimagining Interiorityis made possible with support from Miami Downtown Development Authority. We also thank the generous donors who have contributed $40,000 or more to YoungArts programming as we celebrate YoungArts’ 40th anniversary, including Aon; Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation; Sarah Arison & Thomas Wilhelm; Jill Baufman & Daniel Nir; Carnival Foundation; Tracey Corwin; Jeffrey Davis & Michael Miller; David Dechman & Michel Mercure; Natalie Diggins & Oren Michels; Givenchy; Agnes Gund; Hearst Foundations; Michi & Charles Jigarjian / 7G Foundation; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; Leslie & Jason Kraus; Ashley Longshore; Steven & Oxana Marks; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; Northern Trust Bank; The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation; Prada; PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP; State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; Sidney and Florence Stern Family Foundation; Sandra & Tony Tamer; Bruce & Ellie Taub; Truist Wealth; and UBS Financial Services, Inc.
About the Curators:
Dr. Deborah Willis – As an artist, author and curator Deb Willis’s art and pioneering research has focused on cultural histories envisioning the Black body, women and gender. She is a celebrated photographer, acclaimed historian of photography, MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, and University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Willis received the NAACP Image Award in 2014 for her co-authored book Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery (with Barbara Krauthamer) and in 2015 for the documentary Through a Lens Darkly, inspired by her book Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present. Other book and exhibitions projects include Posing Beauty in African American Culture and The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship.
Dr. Joan Morgan is the Program Director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. She is an award-winning cultural critic, feminist author, Grammy nominated songwriter and a pioneering hip-hop journalist. Morgan coined the term “hip-hop feminism” in 1999, when she published the groundbreaking book, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks it Down, which is taught at universities globally. Regarded internationally as an expert on the topics of hip-hop, race and gender, Morgan has made numerous television, radio and film appearances—among them HBO Max, Netflix, Lifetime, MTV, BET, VH-1, CNN, WBAI’s The Spin and MSNBC. She has written for numerous publications including Vibe, Essence, Ms., British Vogue and The New York Times.
Dr. Morgan has been a Visiting Scholar at The New School, Vanderbilt and Duke Universities and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Cultural Analysis at NYU. She was a Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University’s Institute for the Diversity of the Arts where she was awarded the prestigious Dr. St. Clair Drake Teaching Award. She is the first Visiting Scholar to ever receive it. Dr. Morgan is a mentor for Unlock Her Potential and serves on the Board of Trustees for YoungArts. She is currently working on a screenplay adaptation of her first book, which has been optioned for screen rights. Jamaican born and South Bronx bred, Dr. Morgan is a proud native New Yorker.
