Familiar Rhythm: Time, Nostalgia, and Memory is a group exhibition featuring works of Maiya Lea Hartman, Larry Cook, and Kimberly Anderson. The artists in this exhibition rethink methods of memory-making and documentation through the manipulation of photography.
Through this revamping and altering of photographs, the artists in Familiar Rhythm create feelings of familiarity and nostalgia by allowing snippets of Black cultural tradition to induce a feeling of collective memory and re-memory. The vague feeling of nostalgia presents itself within each of these artists’ works, creating a surreal viewing experience that allows the viewer to feel comfortable in feelings of cultural and shared memory.
While the Black experience is unique, Familiar Rhythm presents a space of comfort and embrace in Black cultural tradition and shared memories among the Black community, regardless of the geographic location. From moments capturing friends, family, and communal gathering spaces, Familiar Rhythm thinks through cultural memory as an experience filled with reminiscence.
This exhibition emphasizes the manipulation of photographs as a tool to heighten this sense of familiarity. Though the image is presented in snippets, collages, and distorted compositions, the picture in its entirety is not needed, as one can still experience what the image holds.
