Opening Reception - Mary Frances Whitfield: Why? // Hank Willis Thomas: unbranded

Exhibitions // Mary Frances Whitfield: Why?
Hank Willis Thomas: unbranded
5p | Panel discussion
6p | Opening Reception begins
8p | Opening Reception ends
FREE, OPEN to the public

PANEL
Moderator: Dr. DeReef Jamison – Associate Professor of African American Studies, UAB

Panelists:
Dr. Paulette Dilworth – VP of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, UAB
John Fields – Curator, Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts
Darrell Forte – President of the African American Studies Association, UAB
Abigail Schneider – Project Director, Jefferson County Memorial Project
Charles Woods – Education Programs Manager, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

MARY FRANCES WHITFIELD: WHY?
May 31 – November 23
Why? presents paintings by the artist that graphically depict horrific racial terror lynchings perpetrated against African Americans. This is the first time these works have been exhibited in Whitfield’s hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. This exhibition was developed in conjunction with the Jefferson County Memorial Project (JCMP), a grassroots coalition of community leaders working with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) to retrieve Jefferson County’s memorial from the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The mission of the JCMP is to bear witness to the country’s painful past and change the historical memory of Jefferson County to better include its history of racial terror and the legacies of racial injustice. This exhibition will assist in creating the needed context to handle this difficult and painful topic.

HANK WILLIS THOMAS: UNBRANDED
May 31 – August 10
Hank Willis Thomas’ 2005–08 series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 decontextualizes advertising images targeted toward African-American audiences in print magazines including Ebony and Jet. For this series, Thomas appropriates and removes all branding from 4 decades of advertising photography. The result is a deceptively simple but shockingly insightful commentary on the ability of advertising to shape our cultural development and perceptions. Using the years of Martin Luther King’s assassination and President Barack Obama’s election as start and end points, Thomas challenges viewers to distinguish between the messages conveyed through text and visual imagery.