The Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Gallery is pleased to present “Socially Engaged: Performance and Photography/Video,” a group exhibition curated by Brenda Massie that deals with the interface between art and activism and the role of art and artists in society. The exhibition and associated events is a featured program of "Year of the Arts!" at Georgia State University.

Exhibiting artists include  Marilyn Minter, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Deborah Bright, Pixy Liao, Kerry Skarbakka, Cheryl Pope, and Christina Price Washington, each who are uniquely exploring identities of gender, race, class, and power.

Gregory Harris, Associate Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art, will join Deborah Bright, exhibiting photographer; visual and cultural art critic, artist/activist Cheryl Pope; and intimate documentarian Pixy Liao in presenting a panel on the individual’s  struggle for recognition, significance, and power through performance and its preservation on film. These participants not only address their personal concerns, but those of our diversely populated nation.

 Marilyn Minter and LaToya Ruby Frazier’s controversial works have become part of everyday conversations around art that explodes the norms of race, sexuality, and class in Western culture. They have exhibited at venues such as the  Brooklyn Museum; The Studio Museum, Harlem; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art;  MOMA, New York City; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Deborah Bright, Pixy Liao, and Christina Price Washington’s pieces reflect on sex, gender, and women, shaking up our assumed behaviors and appearances and waking us to broader possibilities; while Cheryl Pope and Kerry Skarbakka  deal with a right minded paranoia concerning social and political surveillance and the freedom and comfort of the individual.

This exhibition and associated activities are supported by The Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Gallery, The Center for Collaborative and International Arts at Georgia State (CENCIA), The College of The Arts at Georgia State University and Atlanta Celebrates Photography (ACP).     

 The event is free and open to the public but seating is limited. Reserve your free tickets at Eventbrite.