NCECA 2023, Cincinatti, OH: Currents

Curator/Organizer: Lydia Thompson and Chotsani E. Dean

Artists -Monica Bock, Patsy Cox, Deborah Dancy, Chotsani Elaine Dean, Jill Foote-Hutton, Joann Quiñones, Janathel Shaw, Lydia Thompson

Exhibition Dates: 

Wednesday, March 15th, 9 - 5 pm

Thursday, March 16th, 9 - 5 pm,

Friday, March 17th, 9 - 4 pm

Each artist homogenizes the commonalities in Morrison’s novel Beloved, sometimes based on reality translated into fiction. Just as Morrison captures the fragility and strength of her characters, the artists translate these characteristics into their clay forms, where material leaps into imagination and demonstrates the emotional and psychological status of the maker and user. These artists use ceramic material to create a dialogue between survival, fragility, customs, and traditions.

This exhibition proposal is inspired by the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison and serves as the backdrop and theme for the exhibition. In summary, Morrison’s novel is based on the true story of a Black enslaved woman, Margaret Garner, who in 1856 escaped from a Kentucky plantation with her husband, Robert, and their children. They sought refuge in Ohio, but their owner and law officers soon caught up with the family. Before their recapture, Margaret killed her young daughter to prevent her return to slavery. In the novel Beloved, Sethe as the main character is also a passionately devoted mother, who flees with her children from an abusive owner known as “schoolteacher.” She too tries to kill her children to keep them from slavery. (Lowne, Cathy. "Beloved". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Jul. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Beloved-novel-by-Morrison. Accessed 22 June 2022.) In Beloved, the Ohio River is a place where characters such as Beloved, Denver, and Sethe are reborn and given a new life, ultimately suggesting that the Ohio River serves as the bridge between worlds and the line separating them is as fluid as the water itself. Several themes run through the novel and in the case of water that leads to freedom and provides opportunities full of metaphors and symbols. (Mendelsohn, Taylor. “Beloved by Toni Morrison”. Analysis)