Jovan C. Speller: Memory, Myth, and Home

High Visibility: On Location in Rural America and Indian Country

Jovan C. Speller, a multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, MN, discusses her intentions to capture a "portrait of the land" in her mixed media art series Relics of Home, which centers the land in Windsor, NC - where her ancestors labored as slaves - and reckons with inseparability of people, place, and stories.

Jovan C. Speller joins Matthew Fluharty for a conversation on her recent work and its meditation on Black origins, land, and multilayered family histories.

Jovan C. Speller is a multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, MN.  Her work – visual, textual and performative – interprets historic narratives through contemporary discourse. Her research-based practice is centered around elevating, complicating and inventing stories that explore ancestry, identity, and spatial memory – making the intangible tangible and the invisible visible.

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 Aspect/Ratio Projects and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. 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. Speller is represented by Aspect/Ratio Projects in Chicago.

In this conversation, Jovan mentions the following works:

High Visibility is a partnership with Plains Art Museum and Art of the Rural. We are grateful for the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

About

High Visibility: On Location in Rural America and Indian Country welcomes into conversation artists, culture bearers, and leaders from across rural America and Indian Country. This podcast accompanied the exhibition of the same name at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND, which was on view from November 30, 2020 until May 30, 2021.