Emin Özman. Istanbul, Turkey, 2020. Courtesy of Magnum Photos Agency.
Beverly McIver. Covid 19 Series: Blinding Light, oil on canvas.
Courtesy of the artist and Betty Cuningham Gallery.
On April 17, 2021, one year after North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper issued stay-at-home orders for the state, the Mint Museum Uptown will open Silent Streets: Art in the Time of Pandemic, an exhibition presenting work of local, regional, national and international artists who documented the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on their lives and on their worlds. The works on view are as diverse as the artists who made them. Silent Streets presents a range of media—painting, sculpture, collage, printmaking, graphic illustration, video, sound, and photography—to offer a survey of specific approaches that tackled these intensely challenging times in different ways and with different voices. From comic strips to abstract painting, Silent Streets embraces the potential of all art forms to grapple with the most urgent issues of our day, providing viewers with both solace and insight. The exhibition continues The Mint Museum’s mission that art is for everyone and the power of art to address contemporary challenges, no matter how complicated the issue. The exhibition is organized by The Mint Museum’s chief curator and curator of contemporary art Jen Sudul Edwards, Ph.D.
Commissioned Artists
The Mint is commissioning three installations of original works by North Carolina artists Amy Bagwell (Charlotte), Stacy Lynn Waddell (Durham), and Antoine Williams (Greensboro). Begun in May at the height of the pandemic’s uncertainty, the works document the changing concerns dialogues, and emotions arising from COVID-10 to the Black Lives Matter outcry and all of the ancillary considerations that those core events spurred over the spring, summer, and fall of 2020.
Working on canvas for the first time, Bagwell, a poet and assemblage artist, will create large collages that work in tandem with poems written during the pandemic.
Waddell, working with North Carolina quilters, will create textile works that reconsider history, how it is memorialized, and the often-overlooked multiple meanings embedded in everyday objects, such as flags, using lace—collars, mantels, and cuffs— from before and during the Civil War era deaccessioned from the Mint’s fashion collection.
Williams will push his “skin” technique—wall hangings assembled out of dried paint, thread, and paper elements—from the wall into the viewer’s space, introducing metal into these complicated constructions that address the historic and daily socio-economic discrimination against people of color from Redlining to racial profiling.
A video work by two Charlotte creatives that explores the continuous tension created between the isolation and communal dependence all experienced during the pandemic.
A photography collaboration between Magnum Photos and National Geographic that offers a perspective on the pandemic from photographers positioned around the world who made images of their lives and landscapes during the pandemic. It includes images and “diary entires” by the photographers presented in both English and Spanish. More here.
