Installation view of Kevin Demery’s exhibition, “A Lesson Before Dying,” part of the “2024 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards” exhibition on view at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. (courtesy of Nelson-Atkins digital production & preservation. photo by Dana Anderson.)
For the first time, the museum presents the annual Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards exhibit
Mere days after the results of the presidential election rolled in, 2024 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards winners Kevin Demery, Juan Diego Gaucin and Aleah Washington offered perspectives on how it feels to live in America during this time of upheaval in an exhibit of new paintings, textiles and sculptural works at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
The exhibit, which rotates among different venues, is a component of the annual Charlotte Street awards program, an important honor in the KC artist community since its founding in 1997. It currently awards three artists with $10,000 unrestricted cash grants, in recognition of their artistic achievement and promise.
“These artists are telling urgent stories, said Amy Kligman, then the executive director of Charlotte Street, “navigating the minefields of identity politics, the shrouded past, and the way it impacts the present.”
In the Nelson’s Project Space, each artist’s work is presented as a separate exhibition.
As seen in his exhibit, “A Lesson Before Dying,” Demery’s sculptural practice radiates deeply troubling histories of racial profiling and violence, especially in African American youth culture. In kinetic sculptures including “Your Garden Is A Graveyard,” windchimes, bells, hooks, steel butterflies and putti dangle kinetically from an overpowering silhouette of a young Black boy, George Stinney Jr., who was the youngest person to be executed in the U.S. at the age of 14.
Demery, a professor at the Kansas City Art Institute, said, “The work I’ve made is an investigative look into American history and the haunting byproducts of colonialism, erasure and the effects on the spiritual and cultural life of victims of those systems.”
In another series, Demery’s anagrams engage with aspects of semiotics by transforming words into new words through elements of skin-toned wood. The word “Indigenous” becomes “undoing” with certain letters removed from its base. “Incarcerated” contains “trained.” These anagrams ask the viewer to think about the relationship between the two words as well as take pleasure in the flawless three-dimensional typography.
Aleah Washington’s exhibit, “Slowly Drifting,” which hangs on a series of blood-orange walls, similarly draws on histories of exclusion, oppressive systems and division. Her interests in quilts and maps merge in captivating ways, both visually and conceptually. Washington pieces together textiles and works on paper to make what might be called memory maps, especially in relation to her recollection of driving in her home state of Texas. Her piece “Highway Routes” depicts an aerial view of vibrantly colored land patches in red, yellow, blue and green. The representation of her memory appears almost like a board game, recalling sentiments of community and play.
Washington, a recent graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, says something powerful through her choice of fabrics. She sources and stitches together fabrics from different cultures and histories so that when combined, they unify and strengthen each other. By choosing to incorporate disregarded fabrics in her artworks, she restores the power they once lost. In “Snake Trail,” a shimmering silver pathway snakes across the surface of the quilt, which Washington describes as representing water and balance. Blues, aquas and blacks mingle under the snake trail’s surface, providing a depth not often seen in quilt pieces. The undulating lines throughout the piece encourage meditation and reconciliation.
As seen in his exhibit, “Para una vida mejor/For a Better Life,” Gaucin’s paintings, executed in an expressionist style, comment on issues around immigration in the United States. His works “Faith in a Dream” and “Doubts and Anxiety” speak to opposite emotional responses regarding immigration. “Faith in a Dream” depicts masses of newly immigrated citizens traveling by foot into the U.S. with the Statue of Liberty shining a beacon of light and hope behind them. By contrast, “Doubts and Anxiety” demonstrates a different reality experienced by immigrants into the U.S. in its depiction of a fearful group of immigrants holding each other close while a sea of resentful and hostile faces seems to bark words and screams of hatred all around them.
That contrast between optimism and cynicism within the immigration process is something Gaucin wants his viewers to recognize — that both can be true at the same time. Gaucin, a painting instructor at Johnson County Community College and Haskell Indian Nations University said, “Between ‘patriot’ militias, cartel operatives, loose cannon CBP agents and an inhospitable stretch of terrain, the risk to life and liberty is great. A situation which will only grow more complex and strained given the recent election. But even with all that adversity, the belief in the American dream continues to live on, and so does the legacy of immigrants enriching this nation.”
The 2024 exhibit marks the first time the annual Charlotte Street award winners exhibit takes place at the Nelson-Atkins, whose senior curator of global modern and contemporary art, Stephanie Fox Knappe, served on the awards jury with Hyperallergic’s senior editor, Hakim Bishara; Walker Art Center assistant curator of visual arts, Taylor Jasper; and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth curator, Marina Elena Ortiz. They chose the 2024 awardees from more than 100 applicants.
“2024 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards” continues at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak St., through Aug. 10, 2025. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday through Monday and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday. For more information, 816.751.1278 or www.nelson-atkins.org.
