Congratulations to undergraduate studio art major De’Ivyion Drew and MFA candidate Sally Ann McKinsey on receiving UNC Chapel Hill LIbraries’ Arts Incubator Awards!
Jerry Jameel Wilson, Cortland Gilliam and De’Ivyion Drew are collaborating on a visual arts project that examines representations of blackness within the UNC-Chapel Hill community, and explores the experiences of black students at Carolina from 1955 to the present, with an eye toward the future. The project consists of two complementary components—sculpture and short film that broaden and deepen conversations about the importance of symbols, the impact of art in the public sphere and the meaning of equal access to the benefits of citizenship. The artist hopes to display the sculptures and the short film together in a multimedia exhibit that challenges our understanding of place, time and progress.
Sally Ann McKinsey’s “The Coffin Is A Table” investigates cultural responses to illness and death in medical and memorial customs in the American South, particularly those that involve corporate labor in giving both medical care and gifts of cards, food and handmade objects to those experiencing illness or loss. Through sculptural installation and printed matter, the project is concerned with medical and social practices that attempt to keep the dying alive, to manage chaos or to control mortality, and the material practices that reveal large, unanswered questions of living, dying and losing. The project explores fiber materials as metaphors for systems of support, examining artistic labor in traditional folk crafts like crochet, embroidery and quilting using medical textiles like operating room sheets and hospital gowns.
More information about other Arts Incubator awardees can be found at https://library.unc.edu/2020/01/announcing-the-2019-2020-incubator-award-recipients/