La Vaughn Belle: Come Ruin or Rapture
Saturday, September 21, 2024 - Sunday, December 8, 2024
When nature speaks to you, can you hear it? When its restless winds blow, its unruly waves thrust against the mainland, and its hot sun pierces your skin, can you discern nature's sentiments? In Come Ruin or Rapture, La Vaughn Belle acts as a medium between us and the power of our environment, with which many of us have lost the ability to commune. Belle's keen relationship to the Virgin Islands as a site of frequent natural disaster, colonial upheaval, and immeasurable beauty is interrogated with a masterful sensibility and care.
The works presented here were produced between 2020 and 2023, several years after her studio was damaged in Hurricane Maria in 2017. These selections from Belle's Storm (How to Imagine the Tropicalia as Monumental) series operate as meditations on the aesthetics of ruin. Whether at the hands of the environment or the colonial powers that continue to ravage both the land and those who live on it, Belle takes what is ruined and offers a path toward the future through transformation.
Moreover, these pieces confront us with a truth despite the unjust actions humans visit upon themselves and their environment through colonial and neo-colonial practices, nature will persevere. Often, this message is conveyed to us through painful disasters. Belle's work helps us hear this message underneath all the noise, and recognize that with ruin, there is always the possibility of change, a rebalancing of power, and ultimately, a rapture.
Learn more about the artist, Come Ruin or Rapture, and its companion exhibition A Haunting Between Us at Clark Atlanta University Art Museum HERE.
Learn more about dECOlonial Feelin, the symposium convened in conjunction with both exhibitions, HERE.
The works presented here were produced between 2020 and 2023, several years after her studio was damaged in Hurricane Maria in 2017. These selections from Belle's Storm (How to Imagine the Tropicalia as Monumental) series operate as meditations on the aesthetics of ruin. Whether at the hands of the environment or the colonial powers that continue to ravage both the land and those who live on it, Belle takes what is ruined and offers a path toward the future through transformation.
Moreover, these pieces confront us with a truth despite the unjust actions humans visit upon themselves and their environment through colonial and neo-colonial practices, nature will persevere. Often, this message is conveyed to us through painful disasters. Belle's work helps us hear this message underneath all the noise, and recognize that with ruin, there is always the possibility of change, a rebalancing of power, and ultimately, a rapture.
Learn more about the artist, Come Ruin or Rapture, and its companion exhibition A Haunting Between Us at Clark Atlanta University Art Museum HERE.
Learn more about dECOlonial Feelin, the symposium convened in conjunction with both exhibitions, HERE.
