COLLECTIVE TELLING
 Southern Rooted Perspectives on Place , History + Emergence

Echo Contemporary Art  |  Atlanta, Georgia

January 12 - February 17, 2024
 

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"There is no way to hold memory singularly… and call that truth. … We have to do that in collaboration, we have to do it together. And that work is hard.”   ― Sue Mobley, Monument Lab

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Collective Telling counters the political suppression of history across the United States by amplifying and connecting artists who examine the past to understand place, present belonging, and possible paths forward. The exhibition highlights 19 contemporary artists with roots in the Southeast whose work intersects with reparative history by subverting power dynamics and connecting narratives in search of truth. By unearthing stories held within ancestral fires, sacred waters, or the soil around Echo Street in Atlanta, Collective Telling visualizes emergent strategies that allow for new ways of being.

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Through a wide range of experimental practices, the featured work touches on themes of environmental and cultural stewardship, placekeeping, and critical ecology. As seen through repurposed domestic fabrics, bricks cast in latex, and ancient symbols tattooed into the skin of young hands, each piece in Collective Telling can be seen as a palimpsest with traces of what came before, revealing the present by altering what was. Together, these artists reveal multiple perspectives of history and therefore a clearer picture. Collective Telling illustrates the South’s role as a fertile ground for imagined futures, seeded with stories that are blooming and becoming louder.

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