La Vaughn Belle
Come Ruin or Rapture
September 19 - December 8, 2024
On September 19, 2024, Emory College, Emory University Libraries, the Carlos Museum, and the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum will host dECOlonial Feelin, an international symposium that raises awareness of lingering coloniality in the Virgin Islands and offers a space to engage with ecological thought and anticolonial practice. Led by Emory Professor of English and Creative Writing Tiphanie Yanique, this two-day symposium uses art, poetry, archives, philosophy, storytelling, anthropology, and spiritual practice led by the Virgin Islands Studies Collective as lenses through which to engage in this meaningful work. A major component of the symposium includes two exhibitions featuring the work of the internationally acclaimed artist La Vaughn Belle.
Come Ruin or Rapture, opening in the Carlos Museum’s John Howett Works on Paper Gallery on September 19, includes work from two of Belle’s series, Storm (in the time of spatial and temporal collapse) and Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental) where she uses materials from her studio that were exposed to Hurricane Maria in 2017. These repurposed materials take on new forms and express the resilience of people of African descent in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the face of both natural disasters and colonial powers. The exhibition will be on view through December 8.
The exhibition A Haunting Between Us, opening on September 19 at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, displays work from Belle’s Swarm series, which delves into the Danish colonial archives and uses photographic images from the Danish West Indies. Belle reimagines these images through a method of cutting and burning that not only changes them but utterly transforms their colonial context by removing black bodies from scenes of servitude and highlighting them as subjects of strength and perseverance. The exhibition will be on view through December 8.
(Headline image details) La Vaughn Belle, Storm (How to Imagine the Tropicalia as Monumental-as when the ocean rips into the sky). charcoal, ink, and acrylic with cuts and burns on paper. 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
About the Artist
Through exploring the material culture of coloniality, La Vaughn Belle creates narratives from fragments and silences. Working in a variety of disciplines, her practice includes painting, installation, photography, writing, video, and public interventions. She has exhibited her work in the Caribbean, the USA, and Europe in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio (New York), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), the Museum of the African Diaspora (California), and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Denmark) with large solo exhibitions at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (South Carolina) and the National Nordic Museum (Washington). She is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies. The project was featured in over 100 media outlets around the world, including the New York Times, Politiken, VICE, the BBC, and Le Monde. Her work has also been written about in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Small Axe, and numerous journals and books. Her studio is based in the Virgin Islands.
