TalkAbout A Welcoming Place

Join us February 2nd at 6pm for a virtual panel discussion and online reception with exhibiting artist Ariel René Jackson. The exhibition and film, A Welcoming Place, presents a poetic narrative stitched out of six conversations with Black and Brown Austinites, half of whom were born and raised in Austin. In a dialogue facilitated by Jackson, three of the six voices represented in the film, including Michael J. Love, Vladimir Mejia, and John Yancey, will engage in a live conversation based on topics and themes discussed in the exhibition. This event is free and open to the public.

About the panelists

Ariel René Jackson

Ariel René Jackson is a Black creole anti-disciplinary* film-based artist whose practice considers land and landscape as sites of internal representation. Themes of transformation are embedded in their application of repurposed imagery and objects, video, sound, and performance.

*term coined by Trinidadian artist Kearra Amaya Gopee

Michael J. Love

Michael J. Love is an interdisciplinary tap dance artist, scholar, and educator. His embodied research intermixes Black queer feminist theory and aesthetics with a rigorous practice that critically engages the Black cultural past as it imagines Black futurity. Michael is a 2021-2023 Princeton University Arts Fellow and Lecturer in the Program in Dance at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

Vladimir Mejia

Vladimir Mejia is a multi-disciplinary artist who works in installation, sculpture, photography, performance art, printmaking and digital media as well as the current curator of Co-Lab Projects’ Instagram residency #bitres and a member of the art collectives Ink Tank and rossie dustin. His work, while rooted in conceptual art, attempts to incorporate elements which make his pieces relatable to both audiences versed in art history and those who may be unfamiliar with it. Using interaction, humor, abstraction and writing, Mejia tackles politics, race relations, generational divides and the ever-evolving relationship between people and technology.

John Yancey

John Yancey is an artist and professor of Studio Art: Painting & Drawing as well as Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. His work focuses in three main areas: paintings and drawings; community-based mural painting; and ceramic tile mosaic public art works. He directed his first community-based mural in 1976 and has completed numerous public art projects and commissions since that time. His most recent projects include permanent public artworks for the Austin Convention Center, The Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center of San Antonio, and the monumental history and culture art wall, “Rhapsody” that occupies the Charles Urdy Plaza at 11th and Waller Streets as part of the restoration and revitalization of this historic street on Austin’s East Side. In addition to his public art projects, Yancey continues to exhibit his paintings and drawings in gallery and museum venues.