The Griffin Museum would like to invite you to join us for a virtual conversation with lens-based artist, Tokie Rome-Taylor, as she discusses her series Reclamation, on view February 1 - 29, 2024, in the Griffin Museum's Virtual Gallery, as part of our Cross Cultural Narratives initiative.
The artist will discuss how this body of work explores the visual reminders of memory, weaving the threads of history both real and reimagined. Insight of memory plays upon the notion of gaining sight visibility by looking at family history that is contained within memory within family artifacts, within cultural artifacts, and within spiritual artifacts. Reclamation reflects a culture represented within family within community, and a joining of others in shared memory. These works explore two worlds, the actual and the possible.
Rome-Taylor's work shows us that perception of self and belonging begins in childhood and children are the subjects that the artist utilizes as a way to speak of a sense of belonging. Images of African American children examine history and tradition, representing a visual elevation that had been omitted from mainstream western art history.
Questions that stem from ethnographic and historical research that probe material, spiritual, and familial culture of descents of southern slavesare entry points for the artist to build symbolic elements that communicate a visual language. The sitters' family heirlooms, and recollections of family history, are combined with the historical research about the lives of Africans brought to the Americas. The research centers on their material culture, spiritual practice, and traditions. These have all been used to create a visual language that speaks to our shared history. Children and their family heirlooms, the real or imagined histories of these children's families and their ancestors all collide to spark conversation around material culture, familial and cultural traditions of African Americans in the South.
About the Artist: Tokie Rome-Taylor
Interdisciplinary artist Tokie Rome-Taylor, explores themes of time, spirituality, visibility and identity through the foundational medium of photography.
Portraiture, set design, and objects all are a part of Tokie's photographic practice. Through both digital and alternative processes of image making, textiles, and assemblage, she explores the layered complex relationship African Americans in the diaspora have with the western world.
Rome-Taylor's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with an exhibition record that includes the, The New Gallery at Austin Peay University, The Hammonds House Museum, The Atlanta Contemporary, the Fralin Museum,The Southeastern Museum of Photography, The Griffin Museum of Photography, SP-Foto SP-Arte Fair in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, amongst others. Her work is held in multiple public and private collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, The Fralin Museum at University of Virginia, and the Southeastern Museum of Photography.
Rome-Taylor is a 20+ year veteran educator and working artist. Tokie Rome-Taylor