Jul 29th 2021

​Jovan C. Speller: Eulogy

@ Aspect/Ratio Projects

864 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL 60622

Opening Thursday, July 29th, from 5:30PM - 7:30PM

On view through Saturday, September 4th

​Jovan C. Speller
​July 31 – September 4, 2021

Aspect/Ratio Projects is pleased to present Eulogy, a new body of work from Jovan C. Speller and her first solo exhibition with the gallery. Eulogy builds off of her recent series Relics of Home, which was the physical embodiment of fractured black histories and familial memory. Through cut and layered unique photographs, installations, and sculptural elements, Relics of Home traced origin stories and depicted sites significant to Speller’s family history. It was during this series that Speller developed her technique of cutting and layering photographs to more expansively aestheticize the complex narratives that she recorded during her research. Eulogy expands on this research, questioning the role of memory and the transient nature of consciousness, resulting in the documentation of Speller’s notions of reincarnation. The works represented in this series are materializations of distant recollections of a past life – accepting the unreliability of memory itself, and exploring the myths that remain instead. Eulogy considers the process of reincarnation as a passage, depicting a body as it transitions from one life to the next. The departure and the arrival. This series, which includes photographs, resin encased images and artifacts, and mixed media works, references cinematic imagery and elements of visual story mapping to document a metamorphosis.

Jovan C. Speller is a multidisciplinary Minnesota artist. Speller holds a B.F.A. in Fine Art Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Speller’s work has been exhibited at The Plains Art Museum, the Bockley Gallery, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design, with upcoming solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Katherine Nash Gallery, the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation and St. Augustine College. She is a recipient of the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, a Next Step Fund Grant, the Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship, and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. She completed a residency at Second Shift Studio Space in St. Paul and was awarded the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize in 2021.

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