The search for home, for belonging, is a recurring theme in all forms of art and is one of humanity’s
most vulnerable needs. “Everybody has a sense of home. Everybody
wants to feel this sanctuary and this feeling of being valued and belonging.”
“For me the key term is searching, searching for home. Because not everybody has that safe
place where they can live and feel secure. “I think that in this particular moment
in time, everyone is at some level rethinking what home means.”
Agnes Scott College is pleased to present the exhibition Searching for Home at Dalton
Gallery and is grateful to all who persevered during the pandemic to bring it to our campus. Visiting
curator Dorothy Moye spent the last year recruiting artists whose works invoke a distinct
resonance around the idea of home in all its iterations.
Our aim is that the various meanings that arise from these artworks serve as food for
thought for our visitors and as teaching tools in a variety of academic disciplines. With
that intention in mind, we’re sharing the thoughts of some of our faculty and participating
artists. “I think these ideas about home absolutely
vary from person to person, among different groups, based on their cultural background.
the ability to make home is something that I think is very powerful and maybe even that
connects all of the different pieces in the show, in the gallery, or that connects us
as individuals.” “Everywhere we went, my mother made a home.
When we lived in Botswana, my mother grew grass and a garden and flowers. People used
to walk by our house and look a bit through the gate because they couldn't believe that
she had grown grass in the desert. I made a home for myself here in Atlanta, where I
now live in Lawrenceville, Georgia.” Making a home can mean choosing between communities
with good schools, transportation, safety and stability, or it may mean having no choice
but to start from scratch, and to possibly rely on government help or the kindness of
others. Artist Beverly Buchanan’s Happy Shack is
a tribute to the spirit of shack dwellers whose communities dot the South. Through this
bright piece, she invites us to notice the dignity that can exist in the face of poverty
Artist Jess Self ‘s work posits that finding home may be settling in a safe and secure
physical location or in uncovering a safety net within oneself that’s free of traumatic
memories and shame. In the 1990s, participating artist Calvin
Kimbrough photographed his marginalized neighbors who were part of Atlanta’s Open Door Community
to convey the humanity of every person.
During our current times of great uncertainty, quilt maker Marquetta Bell Johnson finds comfort
in ancestral African traditions of colorful patterned forms.
An immigrant from England, Ruth Franklin summons the process of finding home in a new country
through her Ellis Island arrival series, charcoal drawings made from Library of Congress photographs
“One thing that resonates with me is the idea of immigration and refugees, and the
idea that uh, home is something that has been lost, or something that needs to be attained.”
Materials used by artist Jamele Wright Senior refer to the Great Migration of black Americans
from the south to the north as an aspect of the African diaspora. This work depicts the
push and pull experienced by those who left the familiar in the hope of something better.
“For me, migration plays a big part in my identity and also what I consider home. Even
in the United States, I am migrating between African American culture, especially living
in the South, and general American culture because there is a distinct difference, culturally.”
Agnes Scott alumna Yehimi Cambron seeks to reshape the good immigrant/bad immigrant narrative
in the US with her public murals around Atlanta that imbue strength and ability in the faces
of her subjects – such as this one in Decatur. For this exhibition, her artwork combines
family photos from Mexico, the iconic Monarch butterfly and even her Agnes Scott ring.
“I think when you're undocumented you grow up like a normal child and even if you know
you’re undocumented you don’t understand … what that actually means until you start
to transition into adulthood. for me, the concept of home started to really shift in
that time where I started really feeling the fear … of my own deportation, of maybe being
separated from my family. And then just thinking of home being wherever I go and wherever I
can create my work through these public spaces for my murals and so, for me, and specifically
with this piece, I wanted to show that my actual that action of me painting and creating
work is my way of searching for home.
Immigration is not always a choice. Artist Ruwaida Kahdir carried a handmade cookie press to her new home of Decatur, Georgia when she
and her family escaped war-torn Syria. In her new home, she keeps alive the cookie-making
tradition of her homeland.
Ruby Franklin’s artwork explores the longings new arrivals feel for their homelands and
rituals based on her perspective as a resident of Clarkston, Georgia, home to tens of thousands
of refugees from across the world. “Seeing those photos just so preciously
placed in these shadow boxes reminded me of how we hold onto those photos as our only
way of holding onto home, or the home that we left behind.“
“The show impacts me in the way it juxtaposes the ideas of home, homelessness, and also
moving in between places which to me shows that home could be something that’s mobile,
temporary and not always as permanent as we think it to be.”
Atlanta has a number of nonprofits, large and small, whose missions are to eliminate
homelessness. Mad Housers creates simple plans for shelters that its volunteers can make,
to provide some of our city’s homeless residents with a respite. Photographer Daniel Troppy’s
nonprofit YIMBY-Georgia, which stands for Yes in my Backyard, focuses on feeding and
listening to homeless people throughout metro Atlanta.
“I have not met a homeless person that doesn't want a roof over their head, food in their
refrigerator, and dignity. I love to sit down with people and hear their stories and get
a little insight into them. And then if I feel comfortable and they feel comfortable,
I will ask them if I can photograph them.” “There is a very thin line between being
housed and being unhoused. I find it astounding that in this country, in this age, there are
millions of American citizens who don't have a place to put their heads.”
“There's this idea of being emplaced that I study, how everything that we do and how
we think about ourselves is emplaced, it's located in place. And through my work, I study
groups who, in some ways, are displaced or have experienced some sort of displacement,
and watching and listening about how they deal with that.”
The motif of displacement as a result of climate or political change arises in the works of
several participating artists’ works in Searching for Home.
“Jennifer Shaw's work is really, um, stunning, in terms of thinking about place in a flooded
condition. And I think once you see a place flooded, especially if it's in your home itself
or nearby, you really never see it not flooded again. There is just no way to subtract that
danger and that impact from the place you love most and the place you mean to be as safe as possible.”
Self-taught African American artist Sister
Gertrude Morgan’s painting depicts 1965’s Hurricane Betsy which wreaked havoc in New
Orleans’ 9th ward, home to many black people living in poverty.
“The real center for the relationship between climate change, climate, and home, for me,
is climate justice. The people and the places that are impacted the most by climate or
underserved communities, communities of color, places where, um, the, the margin of income
is very, very small. “The difference between a house as a structure
where people might sleep is different from the idea of a place where family congregates
and a place that family attach symbolic meaning to.”
“One way that I think about home is following the thoughts of a feminist cultural geographer,
Doreen Massey, who defined home as the point where multiple social relations intersect,
historically and contemporary.” “When women migrate, they bring their memories
or their histories with them, and fashion a new world. The wildly untamed piece is about
how women, a lot of times migrate for the opportunity, for freedom.”
Whether intentionally or not, most of the artists in Searching for Home convey the notion
of social relations as a form of home, the pillar for an ideal home.
“I was very touched by the work of Ethel Muhammad of Mississippi. Not only because
of the story that she tells in the work, but because of the technique that she used, which
is very intricate embroidery.” Paintings by artists Bernice Sims and Clementine
Hunter on loan from the CJ Williams Collection depict idyllic scenes filled with social interaction.
Fiber artist Lynn Pollard created her piece, Nest, through the pierced brick parts of the
wall outside Dalton Gallery, intending for the ambiguities of home to be felt by its
viewers. Agnes Scott alumna Leila Ross Wilburn’s
house plan books were conceived to help middle-class families build special homes without the fees
charged by successful architects like herself. South Korean immigrant In Kyoung Chun aims
to create ideal spaces from which positive energy can arise during these uncertain times.
Macey Ley’s video installation set in a contemporary home vignette spotlights the
Covid-19 inspired trend of people maintaining connections by keeping extended family dinners
alive using regular Zoom calls. “Home is where you are respected, where
you're loved, where you can thrive, where you can dream, where you can grow without
restriction.” “So I think for a lot of people, Agnes Scott
is a home and a refuge.” “I feel like when I’m creating, that’s
when I’m actually in control of what is happening. It’s almost like I'm using it
to take back this narrative and remind us that wherever we go we can create a home for ourselves.”
Jennifer Shaw’s “Ruby Slippers” photograph
on fabric closes out our video in a moving manner – her artist statement for this piece
is simple - In spite of it all, there’s no place like home.
We hope this video will inspire you to support our participating artists and everyone who
worked tirelessly on this exhibition by visiting Searching for Home in person or online.
We are deeply grateful to the Margaret Virginia Philip Arts Endowment Fund for its continued
support of the visual arts at Agnes Scott College.