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Studio Art Visiting MFA Critic
Allison Grant
Extraction and Reproduction: Visualizing Climate Crisis, Botanical Histories, and Care Work in the American South
Thursday, April 16, 5:30 pm | ADB 331

Abstract:
This talk will focus on two connected bodies of work, Holding Together and Within the Bittersweet. In Holding Together, I photograph women and people with uteruses holding botanicals historically used as contraceptives or to induce abortion. The project serves as a counter-narrative to regressive attempts to withhold certain forms of health care— especially in the Deep South where I live— instead emphasizing the power of community solidarity in reproductive justice. Within the Bittersweet is an autobiographical project about the emotional weight of raising children as climate change escalates. The photographs in the project were taken in and around my home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where natural beauty coexists with fossil industries that pose risks to toxic exposure. Together, these projects consider political and environmental instability at the intersection of care, vulnerability, and collective responsibility.

Bio:
Allison Grant is an artist, writer, curator, and Associate Professor of Photography at The University of Alabama. Her artworks have been widely exhibited and are held in collections at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, DePaul Art Museum, King County Portable Works Collection and several private and corporate collections. Grant was named on the Silver Eye Center for Photography’s 2022 Silver List. She has received the 2020 Portfolio Purchase Award from the Atlanta Photography Group, the 2019 Developed Work Fellowship from the Midwest Center for Photography and was shortlisted for the 2019 FotoFilmic Mesh Prize.