Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection
Heather Hart, Sweet Lorraine, 2021, installation view, Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection, 2021, University at Buffalo Art Galleries. Courtesy of the artist and Davidson Gallery. Photo: Nando Alvarez-Perez.
September 16, 2021–May 21, 2022
Heather Hart
How do we build a space of memory for ourselves and our communities in the future? How do we envision a site of refuge, joy, and coalition for the historically marginalized?
These questions are at the center of Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection, an exhibition that stems from the artist’s research on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. At UB CFA Gallery, Hart presents a sculptural installation that quotes the architecture of the motel balcony in order to revisit this critical moment in the Civil Rights Movement. The work explores the intersection of this collective national trauma and the individual and physical experience of the balcony as a site of memorialization. Designed to be activated by visitors, this exhibition serves as a gathering space and site for study and imaginings by UB students and the greater Buffalo communities.
Heather Hart was born in Seattle and is now based in Brooklyn. She is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the power in thresholds, questioning dominant narratives, and creating alternatives to them through viewer activation. She was awarded grants from Anonymous Was A Woman, the Graham Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, NYFA, and Harpo Foundation. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Storm King Art Center, The Kohler Art Center, NCMA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and University of Toronto, Scarborough among other spaces. In 2005, Hart co-founded Black Lunch Table, an organization that is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, Creative Capital, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Hart is an Assistant Professor at Mason Gross School for Art + Design and a trustee at Storm King Art Center. She works with Davidson Gallery in New York and studied at Skowhegan, Whitney ISP, Cornish College of the Arts, Princeton University, receiving her MFA from Rutgers University.
Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection, 2021, installation view, University at Buffalo Art Galleries. Courtesy of the artist and Davidson Gallery. Photo: Nando Alvarez-Perez.
- Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection Exhibition Audio Description
Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection is organized by Liz Park, Curator of Exhibitions, UB Art Galleries. Design and construction assistance was provided by Assembly House 150, Buffalo, NY. This project is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
