WITNESSING
Alicia Henry
Central Gallery
October 1 to December 31, 2022
Curated by Daina Augaitis
For the last two decades, Alicia Henry has been exploring unconventional approaches to portraiture, using the face to represent something that is hidden, revealed, and performed. Henry creates two-dimensional figures and group compositions that are commanding in their grace and expressiveness. Selecting her media carefully, she works with felt, canvas, and other textiles, as well as leather and paperboard, all of which absorb drawn and stitched gestures that register a spectrum of contexts and emotions. Notions of gender and family are significant in her works, as are physical layers that suggest multiple and unfixed identities. Tender renditions of a mother with a child appear, as do groupings of 20 or more females that signify formations of like-minded families within communities.
In Witnessing, Henry’s compelling compositions are drawn from a multitude of references: the artist’s own memories, her collection of West African masks, and events on the street or on television, to name but a few. Imbued with her perspective as an African American woman, the figures assert themselves as timeless witnesses reflecting a variety of personal and social histories.
Henry does not view her work as political but acknowledges that “at this time in the United States, the brown body has become politicized.” In her installations, composed primarily of dark-toned figures, a lingering melancholy evokes racial traumas suffered by innumerable groups and individuals, today and over the centuries. But simultaneously—through their direct gaze and erect composure—Henry’s multigenerational survivors exude a powerful strength and confidence. They stand in anticipation of an egalitarian future—a utopian goal that underpins much of Henry’s work.
The Artist
Originally from Illinois, Alicia Henry lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions around the world. She has received many awards such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, Ford Foundation Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and, most recently, the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art. Henry received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her Masters of Fine Art at Yale University, and completed a residency at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Henry is currently Professor of Art at Fisk University in Nashville, one of the oldest black universities in the United States.
Alicia Henry: Witnessing is initiated, organized, and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, in collaboration with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Alberta; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Kamloops Art Gallery.
This exhibition is guest curated by Daina Augaitis.
Sponsored by the TD Ready Commitment and supported by Lead Donor Lonti Ebers and Major Donor Peter M. Ross.
E X H I B I T I O N C A T A L O G U E
ALICIA HENRY: WITNESSING
The 9th title in the Power Plant Pages series, this publication was produced in collaboration with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in conjunction with the exhibition Alicia Henry: Witnessing, curated by guest curator Daina Augaitis, organized and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and first presented 26 January to 12 May 2019.
This publication features texts by Karen Alexander, Dr. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, and Gaëtane Verna, as well as an interview between Alicia Henry and guest curator, Daina Augaitis.
A D D I T I O N A L R E S O U R C E S
Alicia Henry
Untitiled (13 female figures), 2019 (detail)
acrylic on felt, canvas, leather, dye, thread, charcoal, pastel, graphite, coloured pencil, yarn, cotton, rayon, linen, wool, nails
dimensions variable
Courtesy the Artist
R E L A T E D E V E N T S
O P E N I N G C O N V E R S A T I O N
I N T H E N E W S
CBC’s Jenifer Norwell interviewed Alicia Henry and Daina Augaitis for Daybreak Kamloops, October 4, 2022.
Witnessing, by Alicia Henry: A personal essay by Naomi McCarthy
