People and Places Revealed
January 14 - February 14
- Reception: Thursday, January 17 from 6 to 8 p.m. Gallery Lounge
- Music by Matthew Watt
- Gallery Talk: Vince Palacios at 7 p.m.
This exhibit investigates photography as a means to understanding oneself and others. McCadams, while working in Cuba on a U.S. research visa in 2005, visited eight provinces and photographed in over 30 museums. “I documented an immense amount of subject matter, resulting in a unique perspective of a country that is narrowly understood by Americans,” she said. McCadams said her images “represent a collection of all types of museums: war, maritime, provincial, natural history, hero birthplaces, rum, tobacco, religious, music, and many others. These museums offer a form of truth gained from unmediated vision. Stories are told through narratives constructed by curators and displays; objects are assembled to make statements. The huge sampling of information I made allows me to construct a visual narrative that is a metaphor for the ideas that sculpt the growth of Cuba.” McCadams earned her MFA in photography at University of Georgia and her BS in photography and Spanish from Middle Tennessee State University. She lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee, where she teaches at Watkins College of Art & Design.
Coppin, professor of art and African studies at Brown University, will display photos from urban West Africa and the Diaspora. His aim is “to pursue visual interpretation of the Black urban experience in Africa, as it may be used to shape a reinterpretation of our understanding of the African continent and its rich potential. We may choose to allow language or allow culture, national borders, and economic and political systems of government to separate and alienate us. Or, we can choose to use all the systems of contemporary society/post-modern world, including systems of art, as tools to forge unions between the many diverse and disparate communities of African descent in the New World, and around the globe. My visual research – humanistic photography – is an attempt to use artistic discipline to provoke and inspire a meaningful dialogue aimed at change: to change the perception of Africa, her people, countries, and communities, around the globe, as a means to creating physical, spiritual, social, political, and economic change.”