“in populated air
our ancestors continue.
i have seen them.
i have heard
their shimmering voices
singing.”
–Confession by Lucille Clifton, 1980
KARL is pleased to present In Populated Air on view August 14th through October 30th featuring works by Devynn Barnes, Jess Xiaoyi Han, Jan Meissner, Rena Monet, Jasmine Ross, Jillian Shea, Corrine Slade, and Stella Zhang.
We are made of the stuff of stories, the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we’ve inherited and the ones thrust upon us. Inspired by the Lucille Clifton poem, Confession (1980), the exhibition explores how stories are inherited, performed, and protected and affect how we continue to behave and move through the world. For Clifton, poetry was an act of bearing witness. She often explored the conflict between the interior self and the public world, examining daily life, her changing body, illness and sexuality. She celebrated the female spirit within the legacy of ancestral inheritances. Her willingness to unveil, to be vulnerable (from the already vulnerable position of womanhood) continues to be aspirational and is one of the roles of artists, poets, and makers alike.
The artists in the exhibition explore through their chosen mediums how personal, communal and ancestral histories continue to be embedded within our lived experiences. Through brave reclamations of the past and the present, they share their inner voices and attempt to make their intangible thoughts, feelings, reflections visible and accessible. Volleying between the tangible and the abstract, these artists highlight that we are more alike than we are different and community can be found in shared revelations.