Atlanta Contemporary Fall Exhibits (Fridays)

From the venue:

All exhibits on view - October 24, 2024 – February 2, 2025

Donald Locke: Nexus

In 1992, when then 61-year-old Donald Locke (b. Guyana, 1930-2010) artist, teacher, critic, and poet, moved into his new brick-wall warehouse studio space at Nexus, the grassroots artists’ cooperative that would later become Atlanta Contemporary, he remarked, “I feel that this is the beginning, the nucleus of something.” Honoring Locke’s penchant for the literary, the poetically abstract, and the unknowable, the exhibition Donald Locke: Nexus engages the multiple meanings of “nexus”—to bind tie, connect—to reveal a practice shaped by the intersection of ideas, mediums, temporalities, and geographies. The exhibition gathers seminal works that span the artist’s dynamic 50-year career. Placing works made during Locke’s time at Nexus and in Atlanta, a prolific last chapter in his oeuvre as a center point, the exhibition explores how this time and space served as a “nucleus of something.” Linking these works to the artist’s journey across Guyana, United Kingdom, and United States, the exhibition probes the ways in which a pursuit of nexus permeated Locke’s work in both tangible and symbolic ways.

Donald Locke: Nexus is curated by Grace Aneiza Ali with support from Brenda Locke, the Locke Family, and the Donald Locke Estate.

exhibit page here

Masud Olufani - A Sorcery of Sustenance

A Sorcery of Sustenance is a collection of recently completed sculptures that trace the cultural retentions of the African Diaspora through food. Inspired in part by the popular Netflix series High on the Hog, this diverse gathering of mixed media works examines food production within the Black community as an alchemy that satiates the body as well as the spirit. In this context, nourishment or sustenance, has a double meaning that refers both to the corporeal and the incorporeal–to this world and to “other” worlds.

In this exhibition, traditional African American food sources such as grain, yams, black-eyed peas, okra, rice, and others, are reinterpreted in sculptural forms inspired by Olufani’s travels through west Africa. The connection between the physical and the metaphysical is a belief deeply imbedded within many indigenous cultures around the world. Food carries the promise of life as well as the seeds of multi-generational memory and cultural identity. It is a mediator of meaning, connecting the past to the present–the world of the living to the world of the ancestors.

exhibit page here

Tatiana Bell - WE KEEP US SAFE

WE KEEP US SAFE is a reminder that we are larger than ourselves. We are the spaces we build for each other, with our words and our offerings, to keep us safe. WE KEEP US SAFE is one of many sentiments expressed online, on paper, in person, and across the world in solidarity with the movements to defend our land and protect our communities from state repression. WE KEEP US SAFE is an ever-growing archive of community offerings, serving as a meditative space to grieve, rage, resist, and rest. Here, it manifests into a collective representation of our grief, holding its weight through the documentation of our actions, feelings, moments, and offerings of love and care. Here, our movements extend beyond the land we are fighting for, into every space we create, with love.

exhibit page here

Emmanuelle Chammah - Mansoura Harvest 1958

There was once a family farm in Mansoura, Egypt, that had goats and chickens and two cows. There were groves of apricot and banana trees and also, a watermelon patch, obviously. When the bananas and watermelons were harvested, they were stored on the cool tile floors of the farm house, rolled and tucked under the tall wood framed beds. And so, every night the family slept on top of watermelons and bananas.

exhibit page here

Piel con Piel - Collaborative Group Show

Piel con Piel is a collaborative group show consisting of contributions from over 10 artists, both local and national. Curator Yehimi Cambrón worked with each artist to create a piece made from repurposed leather, which comes together to form a larger installation.

exhibit page here