An Evening with Shanequa Gay

Rounding out the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art's spring lecture series will be Atlanta-based artist Shanequa Gay. One of Gay's pieces, "La Pieta" was acquired by the museum in 2019 after several students, together with Oglethorpe’s Student Government Association, successfully led the initiative to purchase the work for the museum to expand the diversity of the artists represented in the museum’s permanent collection, and to better reflect the diversity of Oglethorpe’s student body.

 

Two of Gay's works -- including "La Pieta" -- are currently on view in the museum's spring exhibit, "Beloved Community: African American Artists in Atlanta Collections and Beyond."

 

About Shanequa Gay:

 

Shanequa Gay’s work draws upon ritual and personal memory, storytelling, fantasy, and the deep well of southern black traditions found in her home place of Atlanta. Gay’s fodder is play, indigenous belief systems and the spirit of African-Ascendant Womyn and girls finding Divinity in self. She is invested in counter narratives, mythology, and the expansion of the black imaginary. Gay engages in this practice through installations, paintings, performance, photography, video and monumental sculptural figures.

 

Gay received her BA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA from Georgia State University. An active member of the Atlanta art community, Gay's accomplishments include selection for OFF THE WALL, a city-wide Civil Rights and Social Justice Mural initiative led by the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee (2019). Her recent exhibitions include Atlanta Biennial, Atlanta Contemporary (2021); Le Monde Bossale, Montreal, Canada, in (2021); Adorned, McColl Center for Arts and Innovation, Charlotte (2020); Holding Space for Nobility: A Memorial for Breonna Taylor, Ackland Museum, Chapel Hill North Carolina (2020); and Lit Without Sherman, Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta (2019).

 

Admission is $10 at the door for non-members. Free with Petrel Pass.

 

Directions and map: https://museum.oglethorpe.edu/about/directions-map/