"A different kind of tender and the practice of overhealing" includes multidisciplinary works that reference the creation of a keloid—a raised scar-like skin growth that continues to grow beyond the original site of a wound—as an outward representation of healing and a site sensitive to recovery and repair in tandem. The work centers on two towns in southern Illinois, Cairo and Brooklyn. Cairo was established as a port on the Mississippi River in the nineteenth century, and Brooklyn—also known as Lovejoy—was founded by Priscilla “Mother” Baltimore in 1829 after buying her own freedom, and later became the first town incorporated by African Americans in the United States in 1873. By considering the historic and current conditions—as well as potential futures—of these Midwest communities, the exhibition addresses relationships between perceptions of abandonment and fertility, Black female imagination, and different manifestations of healing as Reynolds looks at the Rust Belt as a kind of keloidal landscape.” -Exhibition statement from Graham Foundation
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Press: Q&A with Shawné Michaelain Holloway for Ruckus Journal
©Katherine Simóne Reynolds 2024