Narrative as Reality: Constructing an Identity

Narrative as Reality: Constructing an Identity presents viewers with a journey of humanistic experiences, discovery, and expression through selections from the Jessica and Kelvin Beachum Family Collection. Form meets content in variations of curated images where connectivity, process, and practice take shape through an array of mediums, each unique to the artist.

Aesthetics pay tribute to culture, identity, and the lived experience in each breathtaking composition within this memorable and notable collection. Portraiture, abstraction, and figurations serve as vessels for themes surrounding race, power, society, and the lived experience. They explore the defining and distinguishing characteristics of individuals and the role of greater communities and artist process in constructing that distinctiveness.

Historical and cultural context reveals itself through each artist’s use of medium, color and subject matter. These works brilliantly share space in perspective and relation to one another in a powerful exhibition that explores the formation and evolution of subject and self, impacted by a variety of internal and external factors including: society, community, race, culture, location, opportunities, appearance, self-expression, life experiences, and material makeup.

-Dr. Valerie Gillespie