Gallery Exhibitions

Worlds Within and Without: An Exhibition of Contemporary Black Art

The Lisanby Museum, James Madison University

The Lisanby Museum and the Furious Flower Poetry Center present artwork from the Art Bridges Foundation in an exhibition celebrating the work of contemporary Black artists. This collaborative exhibition is designed to complement the 2024 Furious Flower Conference. Worlds Within and Without invites visitors and conference attendees alike to discover artistic responses to unique narratives as well as the universal truths that unite humanity. Exhibit on display September 11 through December 7, 2024.

Reassembling: IV Acts

The Union Galleries, Festival Student & Conference Center, James Madison University

The Furious Flower Broadside Gallery presents, Reassembling: IV Acts curated by Furious Flower Graduate Assistants Nikima Bell and Haylee Edwards to complement Furious Flower IV: Celebrating the Worlds of Black Poetry. This exhibit will be featured in the Union Galleries in Festival during the conference. You can find more information about the exhibit here. This exhibit will be on display from September through December 2024.

405

150 Franklin St. Gallery, Downtown Harrisonburg

In 2019, the media acknowledged the four hundred years since colonists brought the first enslaved Africans to the Colony of Virginia. In 2020, photographer Shannon Woodloe and poet Chet’la Sebree collaborated on 401, an exhibition in response to historian Annette Gordon-Reed’s claim that “[t]he portrayal of Black female sexuality as inherently degraded is a product of slavery and white supremacy, and it lives on as one of slavery’s chief legacies and as one of white supremacy’s continuing projects.” Woodloe’s sixteen photographic scenes are inspired by Sebree’s poetry collection, Mistress; together, the conversation between image and text explores the legacy of slavery on Black women and their sexualities.

In 2024, Woodloe will revisit Mistress, creating new work to add to the original collection. The updated exhibition, 405, will open on September 17, 2024 at the 150 Franklin Street Gallery in Harrisonburg, VA, in conjunction with the fourth convening of the Furious Flower Poetry Conference (September 18-21). The show will remain on view until October 31, 2024.

Dlo A Rasin (Water from the Roots)

Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art, James Madison University

Minia Biabiany’s solo exhibition explores links between Hopewell, Virginia – a small town to the east of Richmond known as “The Chemical Capital of the South,” where a toxic chemical chlordecone (also known as kepone) was produced in the 1960s, and one of the places where it was exported as an insecticide – Biabiany’s home island, Guadeloupe. Chlordecone is both carcinogenic as well as an endocrine disruptor affecting all organs, especially nervous and reproductive systems. Today, extensive contamination is found in soil, river, tap water, sea, ocean, human and non-human life. Coming from a farmer family, Biabiany listens to the voices of her closest family members telling their relations and emotions connected with the land, the soil, the cycles of waters and their bodies. What are the healing spaces when history repeats itself from legacies of slavery and plantation systems to environmental racism? Biabiany uses water as a connecting tool and deepens her previous interest for one of the most important private and historical resistance spaces against coloniality and French assimilation – jaden kréol – the creole garden. This exhibit is on display September 17-October 18, 2024 with an opening reception and artist talk on September 17, 5-7:30pm.

Americans Who Tell the Truth

Grace Street Gallery in Duke Hall, James Madison University

15 portraits from acclaimed artist Robert Shetterly’s Americans Who Tell the Truth collection will be visiting James Madison University in the Fall 2024 semester. Shetterly’s work focuses on both current and historical figures who have exhibited exemplary citizenship, compassion, bravery, and excellence in facing thorny problems in many aspects of American life. The JMU exhibit is designed to share these beautiful paintings, and the inspiring stories of their subjects, with the university and local community, in hope of promoting dialogue about what it means to be an excellent citizen and to consider the connections between art and the pursuit of justice. Portraits in the exhibit include Niki Giovanni, Langston Hughes and other Black literary figures. This exhibit is on display August 21 through September 30, 2024.

Sponsors: Justice Studies, IIHHS, JMU Libraries, CISE, JMU English, Sociology and Anthropology, Political Science, Communication Studies, School of Media Arts and Design, Philosophy and Religion, World Languages and Cultures, The Gandhi Center, and the Nelson Institute.