A MIDNIGHT THING
CURATED BY LIA ROSE NEWMAN

BETHANY COLLINS, ALLISON JANAE HAMILTON, HỒNG-AN TRƯƠNG

JUNE 15 – AUGUST 3, 2022

Opening Reception with the Curator
Wednesday, June 15, 6 – 8 PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to present A Midnight Thing, an exhibition curated by Lia Rose Newman featuring new work by artists Bethany Collins, Allison Janae Hamilton and Hồng- n Trương. The gallery will host a public opening reception with the curator and artists on June 15, 2022 from 6 - 8PM.

In Zadie Smith’s novel, White Teeth, Alsana Iqbal speaks about living with looming disaster: the precarity of sleeping under a sky that could “open up for weeks on end,” the ground could “tremble and split,” and the mountain over your home “might one day erupt with no rhyme or reason.” While most of Alsana’s references relate to natural disasters, it’s easy to extrapolate beyond environmental catastrophe and extend this notion to current political and social concerns. We are living in a precarious moment. Who better than artists to document, expose, mirror, and visualize what it means if “the life you lead is a midnight thing,” and more importantly, to help us imagine how we survive these times?

In A Midnight Thing, three contemporary artists explore the current moment through consideration of the past. For Bethany Collins, language is both the subject and medium of her work. Works in her Southern Review series are composed of tearsheets from the quarterly literary magazine of the same name, published from 1935 on by Louisiana State University (with an interruption between 1942-1965). Collins’s recent works focus on journals from the late 60s, one of the most tumultuous times in modern U.S. history. Concealing various passages with black ink–leaving behind only titles, page numbers, and footnotes–her manipulation or redaction of the pages represents an attempt to understand what it means to be southern—and more specific to Collins, what it means to be a southern artist.

Allison Janae Hamilton’s Floridawater photos explore a series of connected rivers in North Florida known as the Slave Canal. Dug in the 1850s to bring cotton from Georgia through the Florida panhandle, the canal was already defunct by the time it was complete, due to the development of railroad transport. Hamilton submerged her own body, clothed in a white dress, in the Wacissa River. Her head remains above the water, clouded in the reflection of the water, plant life, and her flowing dress. These works are haunting, yet beautiful. Her pointed foot in Floridawater II and her outstretched fingers in Floridawater I could be read in multiple ways: Is she in control, gracefully floating, or struggling to stay above water? The accompanying video, Lemon Tree, like much of Hamilton’s work, considers the histories and narratives of displacement, environmental justice, folklore, and the vulnerable landscapes within the American South. “I’m always playing around with what is tangible, what is real, what is fictitious, what is mythic. Playing into the allegorical, epic forms I like to explore, the Lemon Tree is part of an 8-millimeter series that allows me to kind of push and pull the viewer a little bit and kind of question reality. It’s almost scientific or archaeological, and then there’s things that are happening in the video that seem not real or seem ritualistic, or seem like a different part of your brain has to absorb what’s happening.” - Allison Janae Hamilton, Whitewall, 2021

Similar to Collins and Hamilton, Hồng-An Trương’s point of departure is often archival, historical documents and images. In her recent series, We Are Besides Ourselves, Hồng-An pairs ephemera from two different recent acts of organizing/strikes on college campuses. Imagery collected during Hồng-An’s 2020 residency at the Wattis Institute at California College of the Arts depicts strikes during attempts to create an Ethnic Studies Department at University of California-Berkeley in 1968-1969. The language and imagery from these strikes are set against the anti-Silent Sam organizing the artist took part in at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017-2018. Both strikes were met with brutality and revealed deception and the upholding of racist values by the administrations. Hồng-An’s use of mirrors to create these works forces the viewer to see their own reflection in the work, and thus, consider their own participation in such organizing.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

BETHANY COLLINS

Bethany Collins (American, b. 1984) is a multidisciplinary artist who received her BA in studio art and visual journalism from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (2007) and her MFA in Drawing and Painting from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia (2012). She has exhibited her work in nationally renowned institutions in both solo and group exhibitions, including at Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Drawing Center, New York, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College, Davidson, NC; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, among others. Collins is a two-time recipient of the Artadia Award, winner of the Hudgens Prize, and the recipient of a fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council. She has been selected for prestigious residencies including at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; The MacDowell Colony, Petersborough, NH; and McColl Center, Charlotte, NC. In 2019-2020, Collins served as Davidson College’s Public Humanities Practitioner-in-Residence through the Justice, Equality, and Community Grant, resulting in a new commissioned 10-part artwork, Dixie’s Land (1859-2001). She currently resides in Chicago, IL, where she is represented by PATRON Gallery.

ALLISON JANAE HAMILTON

Allison Janae Hamilton (American, b.1984) is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, photography and video. She earned an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and a PhD in American Studies from New York University. She weaves folklore and personal family narratives to create works that explore the social and political concerns around land, environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability. Hamilton’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally including in solo exhibitions at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams, MA; and Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; as well as in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY; the Studio Museum in Harlem; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; and the Istanbul Design Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey, among others. Hamilton is the recipient of numerous awards including a Creative Capital Award and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant and has participated in prestigious residencies and programs including the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and Fundación Botín; Santander, Spain. Hamilton lives and works in New York where she is represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery.

HỒNG-AN TRƯƠNG

Hồng-An Trương (American, b. 1976) uses photography, sound, video, and performance to examine histories of war and immigrant and refugee narratives through a decolonial framework. She received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine and was a fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York, NY. Hồng-An’s work has been widely exhibited including at the International Center for Photography, New York, NY; Art in General, New York, NY; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; The Kitchen, New York, NY; Nhà Sàn Hanoi, Vietnam; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MN), and Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp in 2017-2018, triennial in New Orleans, LA, among others. Her collaborative work with Hương Ngô was exhibited in Being: New Photography 2018 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Hyperallergic, among others. She is the recipient of prestigious awards including an Art Matters Foundation Grant, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts emergency grant, the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Fine Art (2019-2020), and the Capp Street Project Residency at the Wattis Institute at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. Hồng-An is based in Durham, North Carolina where she is an activist and an Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.