Northwest Missouri State University will host an artist’s exploration of the ways rural, Black Southern families use visual art as a means of resistance and narrative reclamation during the spring semester’s first exhibit in the Olive Deluce Art Gallery.
Titled “An Archive of Care: Reframing Our Understanding of Family, Place, and Identity,” the exhibit features the work of Robin North, an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator who grew up along the Gulf Coast in the deep south of Texas.
The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, opens Thursday, Jan. 23, with a lecture by North and a reception from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building. The exhibit will be displayed through Friday, Feb. 21.
Additionally, North will visit with Northwest students, including a fireside chat with Dr. Shay Malone, the University’s assistant vice president of institutional excellence and global engagement, at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 22 in the J.W. Jones Student Union Living Room.
"Member of the Court" by Robin North
“We feel very privileged to introduce the work of Robin North to our community through his gripping exhibition in the DeLuce Gallery,” Dr. Karen Britt, a Northwest associate professor of art, said. “The work in his exhibition explores the complicated history of our country’s past in original and deeply moving ways. As historical documents, photographs have an immediacy that draws us in, when I view the work in the exhibition I personally have the sense that North’s images are passing through me rather than my passing through the images. It is a penetrating and meaningful experience that we are