visual arts

Dyani White Hawk’s work illuminates the lived experiences of Native Peoples. With her video, photography, and works in other media, she aims to use the language of visual art to bring light to the deep chasm between our understanding of history and the truth. Her work weaves together forms from the canon of Western art along with the visual languages and traditions of Native people. In doing so, her work spotlights Native women, whose strength and fortitude through centuries of colonization have helped their peoples’ languages and cultures to survive.
On view in Hear Her, White Hawk’s video installation LISTEN presents a series of Native women speaking the language of their people. Each film takes place on the land of each participant’s nation, and viewers hear the respective languages without translation. As such, White Hawk puts a focus not only on the resonance of each speaker, but she also reveals society’s collective ignorance of the people, culture, and language of those native to the land on which we live. Chapter 1 of LISTEN features eight videos and White Hawk plans to continue the series to include 24 videos. The Halsey Institute commissioned White Hawk to create a video to honor the Catawba Nation, located in South Carolina.

White Hawk’s photography installation I Am Your Relative confronts the gross stereotypes and distorted caricatures that dehumanize and commodify Native women. This installation, along with LISTEN, helps White Hawk shine a light on the misrepresentation of Native Peoples while reinforcing the fact that we are all connected as human beings.

Dyani White Hawk: Hear Her is sponsored in part by South Carolina Humanities, a not-for-profit organization; inspiring, engaging and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture and heritage. This exhibition is also supported by the Center for Sustainable Development at the College of Charleston, which provides students with the opportunities and resources to engage in our community sustainably.

On view January 14 – February 26
Gallery Hours: 11:00am – 4:00pm Monday – Saturday, and until 7:00pm on Thursdays
Free admission
Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art
College of Charleston
161 Calhoun Street, downtown Charleston

The Halsey Institute will debut Peruvian American artist Kukuli Velarde’s CORPUS project in its entirety for the first time. CORPUS is comprised of ceramic and fabric works that encourage reflection on the meaning of survival in the face of colonialism. Fifteen ceramic sculptures, each with matching tapestries, will be presented in a symbolic representation of the annual Corpus Christi festival in Cusco, Perú. The sculptures reference indigenous pre-Columbian forms and iconographies in a visual representation of syncretic aesthetic, cultural, and religious traditions. CORPUS engages with and confronts Perú’s Spanish colonial past, asserting that pre-Columbian sacred entities and the worldview they inhabit were not vanquished by Spanish conquerors, but instead cleverly blended with their Catholic counterparts, ensuring their survival. So too, have the diverse peoples of Perú and greater Latin America formed and reformed political, religious, and cultural identity in the shadow of centuries-long oppression. Velarde’s CORPUS asks viewers to consider this resilience via her stunningly detailed and humorously thought-provoking work.

Velarde raises fascinating questions about the inner life of art objects, as well as the exotic “Othering” of sacred rituals like Corpus Christi that now also serve as tourist attractions for visitors to Perú. In this complete realization, CORPUS explores issues of colonialism, cultural identity, aesthetics, and the performance of self.

Kukuli Velarde: CORPUS was organized by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston School of the Arts, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, and the Southwest School of Art at University of Texas at San Antonio. Kukuli Velarde: CORPUS is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additionally, the Halsey Institute’s presentation of CORPUS is supported by donations from A Friend of the Arts, Lynn and Jeff Trenning, Karen A. Vournakis, Lynch Cracraft Wealth Management of Raymond James, Marissa Sams, Marshall Walker Real Estate, Anonymous, Bette Mueller-Roemer and Walter Crocker, Carolyn and William Matalene, Colin Johnson, Karen and David Thompson, Kathryn and Brian Rutenberg, Liz and Greg Lantz, Margaret P. Schachte and Hal S. Currey, Pamela and Stan Kaplan, Sunshine and Tyler Leinbach, Anne and Cisco H. Lindsey, and Adrienne Jacobsen and Joshua Bagwell.

On view May 13 – July 16

Gallery Hours: 11:00am – 4:00pm Monday – Saturday, and until 7:00pm on Thursdays

Free admission

Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art

College of Charleston

161 Calhoun Street, downtown Charleston

The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art will present works from Colombian American artist Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez’s Casta Paintings series. Friedemann-Sánchez’s paintings reference casta painting, a genre popularized in eighteenth-century Spanish Colonial Central and South America that purported to depict a racial and social taxonomy of children born of racially mixed couplings. Friedemann-Sánchez’s contemporary casta paintings take inspiration from this problematic genre to reflect on the legacy of colonialism that lingers in the racial and social discrimination and marginalization present in her home country of Colombia and here in the United States. The paintings feature life-size tracings of female bodies adorned with floral imagery lifted from both the indigenous resin technique of mopa mopa and Spanish colonial iconography. Masks from across Latin America and the Caribbean are included to represent stereotypes born of colonial-era mixed-race classifications that continue to perpetuate today.

On view May 13 – July 16

Gallery Hours: 11:00am – 4:00pm Monday – Saturday, and until 7:00pm on Thursdays

Free admission

Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art

College of Charleston

161 Calhoun Street, downtown Charleston

Now in its 37th year, the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art and the College of Charleston Studio Art Department are proud to present Young Contemporaries 2022. The annual exhibition is a celebration of talented artists at the College of Charleston. With works selected by a nationally renowned juror, the exhibition reflects the strength and diversity of practice in the School of the Arts’ rigorous programs. Featuring a wide range of media, including paintings, sculpture, photography, and prints, the exhibition showcases the efforts of the student body at the College.

Artist Ron Bechet will serve as the juror and awards judge for Young Contemporaries 2022.
Concurrent with Young Contemporaries is the Salon des Refusés exhibition, showing in the exhibition space of the Simons Center for the Arts. The works in the Salon are chosen by Studio Art faculty. The origin of the Salon des Refusés dates to Paris in 1863, when artists who had been rejected from the official Salon caused such a protest that Emperor Napoleon III ordered another exhibition held for them. Among the painters in the original Salon des Refusés were Camille Pissaro, Henri Fantin-Latour, James M. Whistler, and Edouard Manet.

The Young Contemporaries and Salon des Refusés awards are funded by the Dean’s Excellence Fund for the College of Charleston School of the Arts.

Gallery Hours: 11:00am – 4:00pm Monday – Saturday, and until 7:00pm on Thursdays