TOKIE ROME-TAYLOR
INSIGHT: BODY AS ARTIFACT, ARCHIVE AND MEMORY
FEBRUARY 3 - APRIL 2, 2023

INSIGHT: BODY AS ARTIFACT, ARCHIVE AND MEMORY
Memory is a combination of history and imagination. This body of work explores the visual reminders of memory, weaving the threads of history both real and reimagined. Insight of memory plays upon the notion of gaining sight visibility by looking at our familys’ history that is contained within memory within family artifacts, within cultural artifacts, and within spiritual artifacts. Artifacts, in the sense of what remains or what is left over– what echoes out.Artifacts in the sense of  what is determined not to be erased— an artifact of memory. This artifact is  contained in both the body and the body of the mind and the body represented by material culture. These are things that we hold on to that represent our specific culture. A culture represented within family within community, and a joining of others in shared memory. These works explore two worlds, the actual and the possible. 

Our bodies are artifacts. They are the reservoirs of past people, experiences, and memories. These are all passed down  through DNA and story. For many people these stories are housed in family heirlooms that have been passed down from generation to generation. However, the passing down of tradition, whether material or spiritual, has been broken for many African Americans. Throughout the formation of American history, many did not have the luxury of consistently passing down familial artifacts. This exhibition explores the concept of material culture and the human body as reservoirs of history and memory. The artist weaves together strands of history, family stories, along with the magic of imagined realities.

TOKIE ROME-TAYLOR ARTIST STATEMENT
Perception of self and belonging begins in childhood. Children are the subjects I use to speak of a sense of belonging. Images of African American children examine history and tradition, representing a visual elevation that had been omitted from mainstream "western art history". 

Questions that stem from ethnographic and historical research that probe material, spiritual, and familial culture of descents of southern slaves  are entry points for me to build symbolic elements that communicate a visual language.  The sitters' family heirlooms, and recollections of family history, are combined with the historical research about the lives of Africans brought to the Americas.The research centers on their material culture, spiritual practice, and traditions.  These have all been used to create a visual language that speaks to our shared history. Children and their family heirlooms, the real or imagined histories of these children's families and their ancestors all collide to spark conversation around material wealth, familial and cultural traditions of African Americans in the South. 

I position black bodies in a space that leans into the past, reaching back to address the erasure of  worth in how black bodies are perceived and represented.  These traditions that we were able to preserve- such as the passing down of objects, making offerings to ancestors, and the use of material objects as spiritual devices, allow the resurrection of power and autonomy once denied.  My work stands in direct defiance of the erased  history African Americans have experienced.

TOKIE ROME-TAYLOR BIOGRAPHY
Tokie Rome-Taylor, explores themes of time, spirituality, visibility and identity through the medium of photography. Portraiture, set design, and objects all are a part of Tokie’s photographic practice. Digital photography is her foundational medium, exploring the layered complex relationship African Americans in the diaspora have with the western world. 

Rome-Taylor’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with an exhibition record that includes the Atlanta Contemporary, the Fralin Museum, the Chicago Museum for Innovation and Technology, The Southeastern Museum of Photography, The Griffin Museum of Photography,  SP-Foto SP-Arte Fair in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, amongst others.  Her work is a part of the  permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, The Fralin Museum at University of Virginia, and  the Southeastern Museum of Photography. Her work is held in multiple public  and private collections.

Rome-Taylor is a native of Atlanta, 20+ year veteran educator and working artist. 

CURATOR STATEMENT

Insight: Body as Artifact, Archive, and Memory, 2023 explores notions of identity, memory, and belonging through the formal traditions of portrait photography as a critical framework for elevating Black subjectivity. The poignant vignettes of artist Romi-Taylor reclaim identity as realized through the remembrance of ancestral wisdom, spirituality, and traditions. By centering liberatory visual narratives that destabilize and refute historically implicit and explicit stereotypical images of descendants of enslaved Africans, the poetic portraits reestablish a sense of agency, self-pride, and belonging. In doing so, Insight: Body as Artifact, Archive, and Memory affirms that to embrace the fullness of empowered and joyful lives, people of the African diaspora must recall our collective past to reimagine and envision our present and future imaginations. Grounded in historical and ethnographic research while merging traditions of renaissance painting with the technical processes of portrait photography, Insight: Body as Artifact, Archive, and Memory portrays Black children as sacred embodiments, preservers, and conjurers of ancestral history and wisdom. In each tender image, Rome-Taylor intuitively stages the children within scenes of domesticity, incorporating inherited and bequeathed material objects of her sitters. Each familial object is a precious artifact echoing reverberations of cherished memories and a meaningful cultural past.

Acknowledging conventions akin to the portrait daguerreotype yet keenly reinscribed with a lexicon of personal family mementos, Rome-Taylor’s work frames the inner beauty, dignity, and humanity of the child. In We have a History of Resistance, 2022, a young boy presents a vesseled offering at an altar flanked by a small but mighty bronze figurine. Here, Rome-Taylor’s incisive use of shadow and suppression of light connote contemplation and introspection of the familial legacy of military service while acknowledging an inherent African spirituality. A Rebirth, 2021, frames a scene of ennoblement with a seated child nestled between folds of satin tapestries, holding a painted ostrich egg, as a barely - visible Masai warrior stares with a penetrating gaze from afar. It is a compelling scene, evocative of ancient bloodlines passed down from the elders. Rome-Taylor’s self-published book, Reclamation, 2022, inspired the visually stunning exhibition, which also includes the site-specific installation, Site of Memory, 2023 which is a collaborative work created by Rome-Taylor and her twin sister, abstract figurative painter, Sachi Rome. Beholding the portraits are to be transported across moments in time, as Rome-Taylor states, “both real and imagined”; While Rome-Taylor references traditional photographic aesthetics, she does not explicitly seek to recreate the past but rather “to summon imagery that combines elevation and connection to diasporic practices.” Using Black children as her subjects, she crafts a compelling visual language of inspired narratives that encourage the viewer to engage with her work and reimagine a shared history within the images.    

-Nitzanah Griffin

CURATOR’S BIOGRAPHY

Nitzanah Griffin is an Atlanta-based independent curator and writer. She is a graduate of Georgia State University where she received her BA in Art with a concentration in Art History. Her research interests include contemporary art of the African Diaspora, black feminist literature and cinema, and American art where transnationalism and visual culture & power converge. She has worked as a gallery assistant at Georgia State University’s Welch School galleries, as assistant to the curator of museum collections at Spelman College Museum, served as an art advisory panelist for the Fulton County Arts Council and volunteered at nonprofit art organization, Art Papers. She has curated exhibitions at the Clark Atlanta University Museum in collaboration with the For Freedoms 50 State Initiative, and contributed to print and digital art publications such as Minor League and TheArtSection. She is member of the College Art Association and The American Alliance of Museums, and has served a multi-year appointment at the High Museum of Art as an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and son.