The Visual Vanguard art exhibit at The Gantt explores the artistic language of the Black Southern experience 

By Courtney Napier

October 27, 2021

Photo: Tyrus Ortega Gaines

Last year, Harvey B. Gantt Center’s CEO David Taylor reached out to Stephen Hayes and David Wilson about creating a new exhibition. The focus would be on the Carolinas’ best and brightest visual artists, and they were immediately on board.

Both Durham-based artists with over thirty years of experience between them, Hayes and Wilson have made a name for themselves in the South and beyond. Hayes, a multidisciplinary artist who works with “anything he can get his hands on,” is currently teaching at Duke University while Wilson is a veteran public artist who creates sprawling sacred spaces that envelop the viewer in the beauty of the Black experience. 

“Who will be our curator?” is the question that lingered in the air after their meeting with Taylor. In conversation, Hayes threw down the UNO reverse card. “Why don’t we do it?”

“Yeah,” Wilson replied. “Why don’t we do it?”

Because public art is often a collaborative effort, Hayes and Wilson had built a large community of exceptional creators throughout their careers. While he was a believer in their artistic talent, Taylor still needed to be convinced they would make equally adept curators. The two created a proposal to give Taylor an idea of what they envisioned. “Stephen pulled on his resources with artists, most of which made it into the show. And I did the same,” Wilson said.  

Taylor was impressed by the names and ideas both men shared, and at that point it was time for take off. 

Many who check out Visual Vanguard may think they are viewing an exhibition of new and emerging Black artists, but Wilson shared that this is not the full picture. “Don’t get it twisted,” Wilson said. “We are not putting emerging artists on the scene. These artists that are in Visual Vanguard have already hit their marks in different ways.” 

Hayes and Wilson were determined to choose artists who were established yet off the radar. They saw the exhibition as a way of giving these artists the next level of exposure that would propel their young careers forward. “I had been to the Gantt before,” Hayes reflected, describing his early years, “but I never saw myself showing there.” That was until someone saw his art in a museum closer to home, and it was that individual who helped “Cash Crop”– Hayes’ powerful installation piece depicting the horrors and complexities of the Transatlantic Slave Trade– get into the Gantt in 2012. 

There was another way the artists-turned-curators envisioned setting their exhibition apart. Instead of building a menagerie of artwork filling every nook and cranny of the exhibit hall, Hayes and Wilson intentionally created a layout that would let each individual artist shine. It was important to them that each artist be able to tell their story, unencumbered and with the viewer’s full focus– it was what the artists’ deserved.

“We really wanted it to be open,” Wilson said. “We have some decent space in between each piece that might be displayed on a wall or next to a piece that’s on a pedestal so it could have its own time to shine and that artist could have its own shot. And we felt that was important.” 

As the roster of creatives came together, it was clear that this “new school” of artists were more than simply talented, they were groundbreaking. Hayes and Wilson pushed themselves to attract creators who were pushing the boundaries of the visual art form. For example, cartoonist Tony Weaver Jr., the “Weirdo-In-Chief” of his company Weird Enough Productions, has a video version of his comic The Uncommons in the exhibit. 

“So you can just stand in a little space and take in Tony’s work,” Wilson said. Then, around the corner, you are transported into Janelle Dunlap’s apiary as you take in her encaustic painting “Golden Ratio” surrounded by beekeeping equipment and video footage of her artistic process.

The story of Visual Vanguard is truly as varied as the Black experience– from work steeped in technology, like that of Marcus Kiser, or enamoring figurative paintings from Clarence Heyward and Lakesha T. Reid, and the spectrum of mediums in between. 

The Visual Vanguard exhibition, which opened in August and will run until January 17, is the inaugural presentation of the Carolinas’ rising creative stars. The vision is to demonstrate the “omnipresent lingering of Southern roots,’” as described in the exhibition statement on the Gantt Center’s website. It goes on to say the aim of the curation of Visual Vanguard is to explore the artistic language of the ambiguous and indistinct “Black Southern experience.” 

While too many people believe that the Black experience can simply be defined or distilled into a thoughtless package of racist stereotypes, Hayes and Wilson (with Taylor’s guidance) saw an opportunity to not just tell a different story, but show it through the multilingual nature of Black artistry. As the viewer takes in the sunny quilts of Stephanie J. Woods and, a few steps later, explores the sculpted cherry faces of Dare Coulter, the works will begin to dismantle the walls that box in the internal narrative of Blackness in America’s supremacist context. In this space, however, this need not be accomplished through lectures, bullhorns, or sit-ins. In this place, the power of beauty and imagination are the liberatory weapons of choice.

Visual Vanguard: An Exhibition of Contemporary Black Carolina Artists will run through January 17 at The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + CultureA post shared by Harvey B. Gantt Center.

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