Atlanta Contemporary announces the 2020/2021 Exhibition Season

Artists Baseera Khan and Jayne County headline
May 7 – August 9, 2020
Feminist Data Visualization
August 22 – November 8, 2020
Studio Artist Program – A Retrospective Group Show
November 19, 2020 – February 7, 2021
Atlanta Biennial curated by Jordan Amirkhani
February 18 – May 30, 2021

ATLANTA —February 15, 2020—Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (Atlanta Contemporary) is pleased to announce the 2020/2021 Exhibition Season. “Our audience has radically transformed over the last five years of free admission,” says Veronica Kessenich, executive director of Atlanta Contemporary. “The 2020/2021 exhibition season invites artists, curators, and partners to present exhibitions and programs that reflect the mosaic of attendees, members, and patrons of Atlanta Contemporary.”

Baseera Khan Decade
Jayne County BASTET, Goddess of Wet Dreams
May 7 – August 9, 2020

Atlanta Contemporary is pleased to present two solo exhibitions: Decade by New York-based artist, Baseera Khan curated by Dr. Katie Geha and BASTET, Goddess of Wet Dreams by Jayne County and curated by Michael Fox.

Decade is Khan’s first showing in the Southeast, featuring their thought process and work made in the last decade connecting notions of empire, historical lineage, and what it means to be a femme Muslim in America today. Khan uses a variety of materials and approaches—installation, collage, performance, and sound—to create a unique lexicon that works through everyday forms of patriarchy and racism in the global framework. “I combine distinct and often mutually exclusive cultural references to explore the conditions of alienation, displacement, assimilation, and fluidity that produce a collaged identity,” Khan explains. “Bodies are constantly subject to volatile social environments, especially within capitalist-driven societies such as the United States.”

Jayne County, with regards to BASTET, Goddess of Wet Dreams states: “Bastet is an important figure to me both historically and spiritually. The Cat Goddess of Ancient Egypt has always been fascinating to me, ever since I was a small child. I am a cat freak and have had many cats throughout my life. Bastet is the epitome of cat worship and concentration. She protects me and my cats from harm and hostility from ignorant humans, so it is my privilege to present Bastet. She comes in dreams and has sexual inclinations, as she once did in Ancient Egypt, thus, the Goddess of Wet Dreams. The Ancient Greeks referred to incubus and succubus, creatures that visited mortals in their dreams in order to have sex with them. I have depicted her as a fertility goddess with multiple breasts and huge snake-like penises, a representation of the fertility of both sexes, male and female, as one. Bastet, the Goddess of Wet Dreams!”

All Project Spaces are curated by Jamie Steele, gallery director of Camayuhs, an artist-run gallery that aims to highlight emerging and mid-career artists. The Project Spaces rotate once during the headline exhibitions: May 7 – June 21 features Hannah Chalew, Entropical Futures; CATBOX Contemporary, Thomasina; and Jessica Gatlin, Slick,  Morass; June 25 – August 9 features Molly Colleen O'Connell, Usurped Fink Oligarchy; L.O.G., Plumb Tuckered; and Adrienne Tarver, Manifesting Paradise.

Feminist Data Visualization
Curated by Catherine D'Ignazio, Lauren Klein, and Nzinga Simmons
August 22 – November 8, 2020

The works in this exhibition showcase a variety of feminist approaches to data visualization, bringing together ethics and aesthetics to challenge the unequal distribution of power and privilege that exists in the world today. Artists in the realm of feminist data visualization include Annina Rüst, Margaret Pearce, and Mimi Onuoha, who explore topics including gender inequality, reclamation of indigenous lands, and data bias through the creative presentation of data.

The goal of the exhibition is to provoke timely questions about data and power, as well as showcase emancipatory and ethical ways to use data visualization. The most vibrant innovations in data visualization today are not being developed at Facebook or Google, as one might expect, but rather led by women, people of color, indigenous groups, and communities.

Feminist Data Visualization is curated by Catherine D'Ignazio, Lauren Klein, and Nzinga Simmons with curatorial consultancy by Mimi Ohuoha.

Studio Artist Program – A Retrospective Group Show
Curated by Kristen V. Cahill and Daricia Mia DeMarr
November 19, 2020 – February 7, 2021

In thinking about Atlanta Contemporary’s 50^th anniversary (2023), we recognize the incredible individuals who have contributed to the history of the Studio Artist Program. We look back to look forward. Who participated in the program – from its early beginnings to today? And where are they now?

This exhibition will be curated by two Atlanta-based individuals: Kristen V. Cahill, an art advisor with over two decades of experience in several creative disciplines, and Daricia Mia DeMarr, an independent curator and arts administrator. Additional details including title of exhibition and artists included are forthcoming. Research for this exhibition has already begun.

Atlanta Biennial curated by Dr. Jordan Amirkhani
February 18 – May 30, 2021

Atlanta Contemporary is pleased to announce the Dr. Jordan Amirkhani as the curator of the third iteration of the Atlanta Biennial – an exhibition that reemerged in 2016 after a more than ten-year hiatus. The Atlanta Biennial will showcase emerging, mid-career, and established artists.

Dr. Jordan Amirkhani is a Professorial Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at American University in Washington, DC. She received her PhD in the History and Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom in 2015 and has published scholarship on the Franco-Cuban painter and polemicist Francis Picabia, the British conceptual art collective Art & Language, and the photographic work of Crow artist Wendy Red Star. Recent curatorial projects include Identity Measures, an exhibition of 23 New Orleans-based artists for the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans’ 2019 Open Call exhibition, and DIALOGUES, an inaugural exhibition of 32 artists for STABLE—a subsidized studio, gallery, and educational space in northeast Washington, DC.

In addition to her academic scholarship, Jordan also writes art criticism for a number of contemporary art publications including Artforum, Art Practical, Baltimore Arts, and Burnaway.org. Her emphasis on contextualizing contemporary art and artists working in the American Southeast garnered her a prestigious Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation “Short-Form” Writing Grant in 2017 and three nominations for The Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

All project spaces – including newly identified areas of the campus – will be curated by TK Smith. Smith currently serves as a Tina Dunkley curatorial fellow in American Art at Clark Atlanta University Art Museum. Originally from Iowa, Smith relocated to Atlanta from St. Louis where he received his master’s in American Studies from Saint Louis University.

About Atlanta Contemporary

Atlanta Contemporary engages the public through the creation, presentation and advancement of contemporary art. Founded in 1973 as Nexus, a grassroots artists’ cooperative, Atlanta Contemporary has since become one of the southeast’s leading contemporary art centers. We play a vital role in Atlanta’s cultural landscape by presenting over 100 consequential artists from the local, national, and international art scenes through our various exhibition and project spaces each year. We are one of the few local art organizations that commission new works, paying attention to artists of note who have not had a significant exhibition in the Southeast. We organize over 100 diverse educational programs annually including Contemporary Kids, Contemporary Cocktails, Contemporary Talks, Movement Love and more! Atlanta Contemporary provides on-site subsidized studio space to working artists through the Studio Artist Program, removing cost as a barrier to the creative process. Visit atlantacontemporary.org to learn more.

All press inquiries, contact:

Veronica Kessenich, Executive Director
veronica@atlantacontemporary.org
Additional details regarding exhibiting and participating artists will be disclosed at a future date.