Of Dawn

featuring artists Stephanie J. Woods, Granville Carroll, Cara Romero, Raven Moffett, and Mikael Owunna

October 11 - November 11, 2023

Ilges Gallery, Columbus State University - Columbus, GA

Stephanie J. Woods is a multimedia artist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Art at the University of New Mexico. Working primarily in the fields of photography, fiber, video, and sculpture, she creates mixed-media works, handcrafting the props featured in her photographs. Raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, she cultivates an artistic practice concerned with exploring Black American culture, identity, and the impact of involuntary cultural assimilation.  

Granville Carroll is a visual artist and Afrofuturist using photography and poetry to explore representation and identity. Carroll's work also explores the multidimensionality of blackness through spatial blackness, temporal blackness, and spiritual blackness. At the core of his practice is the investigation into metaphysics, specifically the ontology of self and the universe. Carroll's work highlights the imaginative qualities of the mind through storytelling and world building to create new speculative futures and states of being. 

An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Cara Romero is a visual storyteller, activist, and  mother. Born to interracial parents in LA, Cara grew up between the reservation and big city  sprawl. She is known for dramatic fine art photography that examines Indigenous life in contemporary contexts. As an undergraduate at the University of Houston, Romero pursued a degree in cultural anthropology and was disillusioned by how Native Americans are  portrayed in academia and media. After realizing that photographs could do more than  anthropology did in words, she shifted her medium. With training in film, digital,  photojournalism, editorial portraiture, and commercial and fine art photography, her work is shaped by 25 years of formal study and artistic practice. Blurring the lines between fine art and activism, Romero tells stories of cultural memory, collective histories, and autobiography. Her work commonly explores themes of environmental racism, power and belonging of Native womxn, Native sub-pop, and mythos. As Romero’s work continues to grow and evolve, her imagery–which ranges from pointed  satire to the supernatural in everyday life — conveys the complex realities of  contemporary Native peoples. Now entering her mid-career, Romero’s work has been acquired by major institutions including The Met, The MoMA, The Amon Carter, as well as the Forge Project Collection. Over the past 3 years, Romero has been commissioned to create monumental-scale public art including the 2019 Desert X Biennial and NDN Collective’s  #TONGVALAND billboard series in Los Angeles. Since 2017, she have mentored four emerging Native American women photographers in her studio. Mother of three children, Romero travels between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where she inherited jer childhood home and maintain close ties to her tribal community and  ancestral homelands through art and activism.

Raven Moffett (they/them) is an artist and art educator working on Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui land in Tucson, AZ, with their partner and three canine companions: Odin, Jasper Shash, and Iinniiwaa. Raven is currently pursuing a PhD in American Indian Studies with a focus in Indigenous storytelling across mixed media. Raven graduated with an MFA in Studio Art focused on lens-based media (photography and video) from the University of Arizona, where they received their Certificate in Museum Studies concurrently. Raven received their BA in Art and Visual Culture with a studio art emphasis and an anthropology minor from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Their work has been exhibited in several shows in Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Mikael Owunna is a Nigerian American multimedia artist, filmmaker, engineer, and the President of  the City of Pittsburgh's Public Art and Civic Design Commission. He is also the co-founder of Rainbow  Serpent, Inc., a Black LGBTQ art nonprofit organization. Exploring the intersections of technology, art,  and African cosmologies, his work seeks to elucidate an emancipatory vision of possibility that revives  traditional African knowledge systems and pushes people beyond all boundaries, restrictions, and  frontiers. Owunna’s work has been exhibited across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America and has been  collected by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Nasher Museum of Art; Museum of  Fine Arts, Houston; Middlebury College Museum of Art; Equal Justice Initiative; Duke University Pratt  School of Engineering; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Mississippi Delta Health Center; and  National Taiwan Museum. His work has also been featured in media ranging from the New York Times  to CNN, NPR, VICE, and The Guardian. He has lectured at venues including Harvard Law School, World  Press Photo (Netherlands), Tate Modern (UK), and TEDx. Owunna has published two monographs:  Limitless Africans (FotoEvidence, 2019) and Cosmologies (ClampArt, 2021). Owunna’s multimedia  practice includes film and live performance, in 2021 he directed the dance film Obi Mbu (The Primordial  House) with Marques Redd, and in 2023 he premiered the multimedia live performance The Four World  Ages with the Rainbow Serpent Collective. Owunna's work has been commissioned for major public art  installations by organizations including the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra,  Cleveland Foundation, Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, Pittsburgh International Airport, and Orange  Barrel Media.