My Yoke is Easy and My Burden is Light

Exhibition Opening:

Thursday, April 11, 2024

5:30 to 8:00 p.m.

The exhibition will continue through May 24, 2024

Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and by appointment

Anne Arrasmith Gallery

at Space One Eleven
2407 Second Avenue North, Downtown Birmingham

Buoyed by our predecessors’ paths to joy and liberation, we transmute pain into progress and become a beacon. Illumination is our charge and our destiny.

The dual exhibition, “My Yoke is Easy and My Burden is Light”, features the works of Erin LeAnn Mitchell and E L Chisolm who delve into the fortitude and genius of Black womanhood.

In the face of systemic injustice, we resist with skill and style. These new artworks call viewers to act.

In conjunction with the exhibition, attendees will be encouraged to reflect on the narrative and then respond to a text prompt: “How do you turn pain into progress?” In addition, a gallery walkthrough will be hosted by the artists to discuss the intricacies of their work. The date for the walkthrough is to be announced.

Erin LeAnn Mitchell is a textile artist from Birmingham, Alabama who received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Master of Arts in Art Education from Columbia College Chicago. Her work is an expansion of the southern quilting tradition, using a mixture of textiles and collage gathered in textile markets and fabric stores. These multidimensional assemblages render the realities of southern Blackness into radical new imaginings.

E.L. Chisolm (b. 1993) is an interdisciplinary artist, muralist, art activist, and creative placemaking consultant living and working between Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia. Her work across mediums has activated public spaces in underserved communities to help decrease blight and increase walkability and wellness using tactical urbanism projects and public art. Guided by the belief that all people are equally as deserving of vibrant and healthy communities, the artist explores the strength and honesty that come from the natural world and seeks to illuminate the distinctive facial attributes of Black people, emphasizing texture and feature diversity in her mixed media paintings and murals alike.