SAVANNAH WOOD, HARD TO GET AND DEAR PAID FOR, DIGITAL VIDEO, RUNTIME: 4:14, 2020

February First Friday we will open the exhibition The Archive as Liberation, from 6-9pm. Co-curator Aaron Turner will give a talk about the exhibition starting at 6pm, with the opportunity to discuss the show with him throughout the evening.

RAYMOND THOMPSON JR., PORTAL #110.958, RAILROAD JUNCTION, NEW BERN, NC, ARCHIVAL INKJET PRINT, 20 X 16 INCHES, 2023

Preserving an image or document in an archive immediately elevates it above the fray of history, making it visible for future consideration and response. Archives offer fragments of past lives, events, and representations, edited and distilled, collectively revealing nuances of their subjects and even more about their makers.

The Archive as Liberation features five artists who incorporate and re-contextualize material from various types of archives in their work. These artists recognize the power of archival photographic methods to connect and collapse tenses of time and experience, leading to important personal and cultural truths. Published as a book and exhibited at Silver Eye and Light Work in 2025, the 2026 Aurora installation of The Archive as Liberation, co-curated with Aaron Turner, features photography and video-based work by Andre Bradley, calista lyon, Raymond Thompson Jr., Harrison Walker, and Savannah Wood. Turner, writing in the opening essay of the eponymous book, describes the engagement with and care for other peoples’ materials in an archive as inherently empathetic, an action that implies a deep value and commitment to the lived experience of others. The five artists in The Archive as Liberation lay bare that beautiful empathy through their work.