For nearly 30 years, the Charlotte Street Foundation’s Visual Artist Awards have spotlighted and supported Kansas City’s exceptional visual artists. Now, for the first time, the Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards winners will be featured at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Beginning Nov. 9, the art of 2024 award winners Kevin Demery, Juan Diego Gaucin, and Aleah Washington will be on display in three joint exhibitions at the museum. Together, the exhibitions capture Kansas City’s bold, progressive art community. Individually, they represent the artist’s unique practice in conversation with complex issues.
Multimedia installation artist Demery finds poetry in objects in his exhibition A Lesson Before Dying, which interrogates Black historical narratives and the sociopolitical context in which he finds himself as a Black man. “Sculpture is the vehicle I use to engage the audience with iconic elements such as children’s puzzles, windchimes, and plaster-cast hands,” Demery says. “I’m drawn to the use of unconventional materials to reveal the subtle nuances of the histories I awaken.”
Informed by his childhood emigration from Mexico, painter Gaucin explores the immigrant experience in Para una vida mejor/For a Better Life. Gaucin explains the exhibition’s title and message: “Ask any immigrant why they choose to risk their lives and freedoms attempting to come into the United States or any other prosperous nation, and you will likely hear the phrase, ‘for a better life for my family.’”
Washington’s exhibition Slowly Drifting features vibrant quilts and colored pencil drawings. Her quilts trace oppressive systems like redlining and navigate the contours of displacement, urban decay, and our relationship to the environment. “The fabrics I source correlate to different cultures and histories, but when combined they create unity and demonstrate a new strength,” she says. “Disregarded fabrics gain value by being reshaped and then brought back together.”
The 2024 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards are the latest presentations in the KC Art Now series at the Nelson-Atkins, which features exceptional art from local, contemporary artists. They will be on view for free Nov. 9, 2024-Aug. 10, 2025.
