Leading image courtesy of artist, Calista Lyon, featuring A Violent Unmaking.
November, an immersive lens-based exhibition featuring 12 Columbus-based, national and international artists, will be on view by appointment from Jan. 19 through March 6 in the Beeler Galley at the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD).
The exhibition's curator, Heather Taylor, is a CCAD alum who asked each of the artists to create work that reflects the tone of 2020 in light of the pandemic, loneliness and the uncertainty of the 2020 U.S. general election.
"The artists participating created works that respond to this moment, our rituals and the nature of being isolated," Taylor says. "My hope is that this exhibition will create a restorative escape for viewers."
Despite the delay of the opening from November to January due to COVID-19, November will remain the show's title because the work captures the month's particularly uncertain crossroads.
Bobby T. Luck's video collage, Drapetomania
One of the featured artists is Philadelphia native, Bobby T. Luck. He moved to Columbus in late 2013 and has worked on and off as an artist here ever since. He says this project was an opportunity to combine two ideas he'd been thinking about separately for several months.
One of the focuses of his work derives from the concept of Drapetomania, the racist and pseudoscientific mental illness made up to explain why slaves ran away from home in the 1800s.
"I was thinking about that feeling of being stuck in a place and not being able to leave," Luck says. "Which is of course, what we all felt over quarantine. But it's also a thing that Black people feel in general because we're constantly socially fragmented away from our other communities and put in financially unstable situations so we can't go out and seek other people that are like us."
This exhibition will be the first to reopen the Beeler Gallery since it closed temporarily due to COVID-19. The gallery is taking extra measures to protect the safety and health of visitors and employees in accordance with the guidelines set by the state of Ohio in preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Still images from The Work by Lexie Smith
New protocols include timed admission tickets, face mask requirements, limitations to the number of visitors at any given time, social distancing requirements and enhanced cleaning procedures.
To reserve your free ticket, visit ccad.edu/november.
Nora McKeown is an editorial assistant. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
