The University of Tennessee’s Downtown Gallery will showcase the mixed-media installation “The Promise of the Rainbow Never Came” and a selection of prints from Katrina Andry’s “Colonial Colorism Influences in the Black Community – Past and Present.” As Dillon Raborn described in a 2019 review (Burnaway) Andry’s work explores tropes and sites (including cities like New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and others) to bring attention to their role in the production and expansion of slavery, and in transporting enslaved people to the American South and the Caribbean. With “The Promise of the Rainbow Never Came,” New Orleans-based artist gives us “the chance to engage in a particularly difficult but necessary confrontation with that painful history.”
Katrina Andry’s work will be on view from January 5 to February 17, 2024, at the UT Downtown Gallery (106 South Gay Street, Knoxville, Tennessee), which will host two First Friday Receptions: on January 5 and February 2, from 5:00 until 9:00pm.
Artist Lecture: On February 1, 2024, 5:30-7:30pm, at the McCarty Auditorium (A+A Building, UT Campus), Althea Murphy-Price, Professor at the School of Art, will be in conversation with Katrina Andry for Black History Month.
The Promise of the Rainbow Never Came is a mixed-media installation that considers the dehumanization African people endured during the Middle Passage, the second leg of enslavement and forced migration of people brought in bondage to the Americas between the late 1400 – 1800s. Andry pairs her signature oversized woodblock prints with an installation of small mirrored figures to reimagine a different outcome for enslaved Africans cast overboard. As they enter the water, they transform into eels, twisting and swimming freely in the ocean escaping a life of enslavement and mistreatment. Viewed through an Afrofuturist lens, Andry’s work considers the “possibility of freedom.”
The Downtown Gallery will also display a selection of prints from Andry’s Colonial Colorism Influences in the Black Community – Past and Present. This series features Andry’s large format and boldly-colored woodblock prints which explore narratives on our collective consciousness: ethnicity, social hierarchy, Black experiences, quality of life, and the collective perception of society as a whole toward race relations and social standards.
For more information, see https://downtown.utk.edu/katrina-andry/
Also see https://www.katrina-andry.com/work/the-promise-of-the-rainbow-never-came
[Shown above: Katrina Andry, “The Promise of the Rainbow Never Came #8,” 2018; woodcut and mylar, courtesy of the artist and the LSU Museum, Baton Rouge.]
The University of Tennessee’s Downtown Gallery will showcase the mixed-media installation “The Promise of the Rainbow Never Came” and a selection of prints from Katrina Andry’s “Colonial Colorism Influences in the Black Community – Past and Present.” As Dillon Raborn described in a 2019 review (Burnaway) Andry’s work explores tropes and sites (including cities like
