Rial Rye
Jun 22, 2025 - Sep 7, 2025
Studio Artist Wall
Assemblage on panel by Rial Rye for our Studio Artist Wall
As Black landowners in the early 20th century, my great-great grandparents, Burrel and Mattie Henry, were frequently attacked by White locals seeking to drive them from their 400-acre Alabama home.
Burrel worked to establish relationships with local law enforcement, politicians, and other influential Whites, in hopes that his proximity to powerful members of the community would insulate his family from violence. On February 10, 1923, against the wishes of his wife, Burrel invited a group of prominent White Alabamans to join him for a hunt on the Henrys' acreage. He was shot dead. His murderers escaped justice by claiming they simply missed their target -- a rabbit in a tree.
Burrel Henry
1874-- 1923
Bios
Rial Rye
Rial Rye (b. 1987) is a self-taught, Atlanta-based artist whose work examines the valuation and visibility of labor in the United States. Repurposing as art media the tools of working class occupations, like construction, manufacturing, childcare, and custodial work, Rye imbues these items with an aesthetic beauty, elevating them to positions of prominent display that they are typically denied.
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