We Are New Again

We Are New Again, explores the relationship between home, lineage, and ritual. Curated by Amirah Ellison, the exhibition features artwork by Ayana Lance, Candice Davis, and Kehayr Brown. For the artists, the creative process is a visualization of racial trauma as a means of filling in the gaps left behind by buried histories. For Ellison, the curatorial process is an invitation to bear witness to the work, through the arrangement of an oasis that sheds the barriers of traditional gallery space and seeks to increase intimacy between image, object, and viewer. Rather than presenting one singular truth, this exhibition is a space for the viewer to call forth the past, to remember. Through an assemblage of materials, including wood, fabric, moving image, and blood, these artists practices create a space for ancestral recollection and contemplation of the sacred.
 

Through our program Ellison developed this exhibition by attending monthly cohort meetings with fellow emerging curators, a mentorship with Tia-Simone Gardner, and meetings with visiting curators. We appreciate our exhibition partner, Film North, a non-profit organization that empowers artists to tell their stories, launch and sustain successful careers, and advance The North as a leader in the national network of independent filmmakers.
 

About the Artists
Ayana Lance (she/her) is a black, queer, Minneapolis based artist. Her work is rooted in the idea of self, memory and myth.  Using video projection and found materials, her pieces operate as a fact, a implication, and an accusation. 

Candice Davis is a conceptual artist from San Antonio and living in Minneapolis. Her practice is focused in digital media, installation, and performance as a means of witnessing for the experiences of marginalized people, with specific emphasis on her experience as a Black woman in the United States of America.

Kehayr Brown is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator and writer from Wauwatosa, WI working in Minneapolis, MN. Kehayr's work often engages in conversation of viewership, authenticity, and politics of display regarding non-western communities.
 

About Amirah Ellison
Amirah Ellison graduated from Carleton College Northfield with a Bachelor’s in Art with a major in Cinema and Media Studies and minor in Middle East Studies. While studying for her undergraduate degree, Ellison was a Mellon Mays Research Fellow and Public Poetry Fellow. She is the founder and curator of infemous, a zine dedicated to amplifying feminist journalism, critical analysis, art and other forms of expression.
 

Ellison is the recipient of the Emerging Curators Institute 2019-20 Fellowship. During her fellowship she will curate an exhibition with local black artists as a gesture of love towards her community. Through story and form, the exhibition will serve as an expression to flatten the boundaries between things that are seemingly disparate.

Image: Selected work from Deaccessionings, Candice Davis. Courtesy of the artist.