The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston School of the Arts presents an Artist Talk with Joshua Parks.
Parks is a southern-raised, Black image-maker and cultural worker with Gullah Geechee and Gulf Coast Creole heritage. His work analyzes Afro-descendant communities in the Atlantic world, their relationship to land and water as the basis of subsistence, autonomy, survival, and collective memory, and how these elements influence social and cultural development. The Halsey Institute is proud to present Parks’s first solo museum exhibition.
In his practice, Parks puts intentional relationships and storytelling first, using image as his medium for communication. This exhibition explores the interconnectedness among communities of African descendants in the Lowcountry, the Caribbean, and West Africa through photography, film, and sounds of the Atlantic World. Bridging past and present, he presents a continuum of culture across time and space underscoring the resilience and ongoing evolution of African and Afro-descendant identities all while confronting and transcending the enduring legacies of slavery and colonialism. Dispersed throughout this global representation of shared histories, Parks incorporates archival family photographs and artifacts engaging the viewer with the context of his personal history. This body of work makes evident the intimate and complex relationships among African diasporic communities and the fight for self-determination.
The Halsey Institute’s Artist Talks are free and open to the public. Click here for more info.