LONGITUDE AND LATITUDE




An installation of mixed media works on paper created
during Ewing's residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Exploring social and historical narratives of forced migration or displacement, Longitude and Latitude considers mnemonic geography and the intersections of body, place, and memory within the African diaspora.

Curated by Elena Gross, who says: Rodney Ewing’s A Conclave of Smoke and Memories, is a visceral retelling of the racially-charged destruction of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, known more famously as Black Wall Street.  “I love this exhibit for bringing our origins into the present and for making possible what wouldn’t have even been fathomed at the time.” 

Last Rites pays homage to the enslaved men who worked the Imperial Sugar Company plantation in Sugar Land, TX.  Four shadowed figures stand before us, their forms now re-contextualized through planes, grids and black squares that have the effect of butterflies.