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Southern Exigency features ten Atlanta artists whose
media-spanning works interrogate place, familial roots,
memory, and physical land. Some works delve into the
rich world of memories, often passing through portals and entering dreams or transformed realities. Others
interrogate our relationship with the land and what we
miss—or even look away from—that lies just under the
surface. The power of storytelling coupled with radical vulnerability is evident throughout as each artist confronts themself and their environment, leading to the
emergence of reborn narratives and deepened understandings.
Connected, the works compose a varied and rigorous
picture in response to and in conversation with the exigencies of the contemporary American South. How do
we trace the places we have been while defining the
urgent demands of the present and future? How can
we navigate ourselves through the unknown, making
the process a practice? What radical arrival(s) might
we meet and what might we heal along the way? Through a critical examination of roots, memories, and
histories, the artists in Southern Exigency posit how we
might move into complexity, make the invisible visible,
and open ourselves to the fullness of time and place.
