In honor of the Tennessee Triennial, a program of Tri-Star Arts, the Hunter Museum of American Art has reinstalled its contemporary gallery with artworks that speak to healing and repairing —our bodies, our relationships and our communities and planet.
Featured artists include Nick Cave, Deborah Luster, Dawoud Bey, Fabiola Jean-Louis, Sanford Biggers, Kiki Smith, Shirin Neshat and others. The majority of these works are new acquisitions to the collection and forward our mission of supporting female artists and artists of color.
The 2023 theme and core concept for the inaugural Tennessee Triennial is RE-PAIR. The Tennessee Triennial is a unified multi-site, multi-city exhibition. Participating venues act with agency by selecting artists and curating their own exhibitions, utilizing the 2023 Tennessee Triennial theme under the counsel of consulting curator Dr. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.
“To heal, suture, and recompose fractured bodies. We propose a new site of encounters, with yet undefined edges, borders, territories. These will be cartographies of the mind as well as geographies of the land. Ours is a complex time in history. Both excesses and fundamental limitations define the present moment," says Dr. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.
"The planet is frail, societal contracts instable, biology in a spin of uncertainties. Technologies lure and frighten us all at once. Can we conquer our uneasiness with an attitude that mends the fractures of our time? Can we re-pair, patch and rebuild our fragile spirits, bodies, cities, political institutions and economic relationships?”
Locally participating organizations include the Institute of Contemporary Art at UTC, Stove Works, and the Hunter Museum of American Art.