Join us at Alexander Gray Associates, New York for a conversation between artist Bethany Collins and writer Catherine Lord on Friday, December 15 at 3:00 PM. The talk is organized on the occasion of Undercurrents, Collins’s first solo exhibition with the Gallery, and to celebrate the publication of The Effects of Tropical Light on White Men, Lord’s most recent book.
Bethany Collins is a multidisciplinary Chicago-based artist whose conceptual practice examines the relationship between race and language. Centering language, her works illuminate America’s past and offer insight into the development of racial and national identities. Drawing on a wide variety of documents, ranging from nineteenth-century musical scores to US Department of Justice reports, she erases, obscures, excerpts, and rewrites portions of text to bring to the fore issues revolving around race, power, and histories of violence. A solo exhibition of Collin’s work, America: A Hymnal, is currently on view at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and her work is represented in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Saint Louis Art Museum, MO; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, among others. She is the recipient of many awards and grants, most recently the Gwendolyn Knight & Jacob Lawrence Prize, Seattle Art Museum, WA (2023).
Catherine Lord is a writer, artist, and curator whose work addresses issues of feminism, cultural politics, and colonialism. Her most recent book, The Effect of Tropical Light on White Men (no place press, 2023), explores the power relations between colonizer and colonized, public and private, image and word, in some three hundred entries that purport to be an encyclopedia. Lord’s work has been exhibited at SITE Santa Fe, NM, Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and Callicoon Fine Arts, NY. Her critical essays and creative nonfiction texts have been widely published and anthologized. Earlier books include The Summer of Her Baldness: A Cancer Improvisation (University of Texas Press, 2004), translated into French as Sa Calvitie, Son Colibri; Miss Translation; and Art and Queer Culture (Phaidon Press, 2013), co-authored with Richard Meyer. Lord is based in New York and Hudson.
More information on Bethany Collins: Undercurrents and Catherine Lord: The Effect of Tropical Light on White Men