Allison Janae Hamilton, Hannah Wilke

Episode No. 509 features artist Allison Janae Hamilton and curator Tamara Schenkenberg. Allison Janae Hamilton is included in "Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse," which is at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond through September 6. The exhibition, which was curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, examines the aesthetics of early 20th-century Black culture across the South. It details how sonic and visual parallels in Southern Black culture have informed and shaped broader contemporary American culture. She's also included in "Enunciated Life" at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, which considers Black spirituality. It was curated by Taylor Renee Aldridge and runs through August 15. Hamilton's work investigates and reveals the South's history and landscape and their influence on the American story across photographs, sculpture, video and installation. She has had solo exhibitions at Recess in New York, the Atlanta Contemporary and at MASS MoCA, and New York's Times Square Arts and Creative Time have presented her work. Clips from several of the Hamilton video installations discussed on this program are available on Hamilton's Vimeo page, including: Wacissa (2019); Waters of a Lower Register (2020); and A Pale Horse (2021); On the second segment, Schenkenberg discusses her exhibition "Hannah Wilke: Art for Life's Sake," which is at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in Saint Louis through January 16, 2022. The career-spanning exhibition features 120 works that reveal how Wilke considered the vulnerability of the human body as essential to experiencing life and connection. The museum's exhibition guide is available as a free download.