Join us for artist talks by artists featured in Grounded in Grain, Washed in the Water; exhibition curator Lauren Jackson Harris; as well as additional sessions related to the exhibition. Check back for the detailed schedule. 

Grounded in Grain, Washed in the Water explores ancestral narratives and practices laced into the contemporary Black experience of the South that seeks to sustain traditions of water and land through stories told over time. Rooted in resilience, creativity and connection, this collaborative exhibition between the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art and the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture delves into the unification of both historical and visual language and the soil and waterways of Black agrarian life.   

The artists being presented are based in the South, and their work traverses these narratives, which are steeped in the deep histories of Black farming practices to modern movements reclaiming food sovereignty. From the cultivation of grains to the rituals of the table, stories often told reveal the ways in which food and land have been a site of survival, resistance and renewal. As a symbol of life, healing and transformation, water is a part of ancestral wisdom and African spirituality that reflects the cultural significance of the past, present, and future. 

Through a range of mediums – painting, collage, sculpture and immersive installations – the artists featured in Grounded in Grain, Washed in the Water honor the intimate relationships between body and land, seed and story, memory and place. The exhibition asks: How do we reconnect with the wisdom of our ancestors? What does it mean to nourish not only the body but the spirit? And how do the histories embedded in our foodways guide us toward liberation?