Fabiola Jean-Louis
By: Hannah Phillips
Office of Media Relations
The University of Central Arkansas presents its final artist-in-residence for the fall semester with Fabiola Jean-Louis, who specializes in photography, film, ceramics, and paper textile design. The artist’s residency is from Monday, Nov. 15 to Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021.
Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Jean-Louis will host a public discussion panel in the McCastlain Ballroom. Joining Jean-Louis will be Okoli, Bryan Massey, chair and professor of art and design at UCA, and Crystal C. Mercer, an established local artist-activist who uses textiles, performance and poetry as narrative forms of social justice.
“I hope our students will learn a lot about the intersections of representational regimes around race and gender,” said Okoli. “That is something that is central in her work and something I want students to gain a better understanding of.”
Hosted by the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Jean-Louis will host three hands-on workshops on Tuesday. At 9 a.m., she will visit a UCA Sculpture 1 class in Schichtl Arts, room 125. At 10:40 a.m, Jean-Louis will visit Ceramics 1, and at 2:40 p.m., she will visit Slip Casting and Glazing, both in Schichtl Arts, room 127. These events are open to the public.
On Thursday in Burdick, room 213, Jean-Louis will hold discussions with UCA’s Africana Arts and Visual Culture course at 9:25 a.m. and Littérature et Culture Engagée at 10:50 a.m. These events are closed to the public.
Jean-Louis uses photography, film, ceramics and paper works to restore the absence of Black and Brown people in historical imagery. The Andrew Freedman Home, Lux Art Institute, DuSable Museum of African American History, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Metropolitan Museum exhibited her work.
Her current work Rewriting History is an ongoing series that utilizes paper gowns, painterly photographs and polaroids. Rewriting History was an opening exhibit for Smithsonian affiliates, DuSable Museum of African American History, Alan Avery Art Company and Andrew Freedman Home.
Magazines, including Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, Modern Luxury, Artnet News, Art Critical, Hyperallergic, Atlanta Art Constitution, Chicago Sun Times, The Fashion Journal and The Haitian Times, have featured Jean-Louis.
For additional information or to view some events via live stream, visit CAHSS artists-in-residence or contact Adele Okoli, assistant professor of French in affiliation with African and African American studies and gender studies, at kokoli@uca.edu.
