InLight 2021 (Photo by David Hale)
It’s back and brighter than ever. On Nov. 18-19, 1708 Gallery’s 15th annual InLight exhibition, an array illuminating in both the electric and aesthetic senses, is now coming to Joseph Bryan Park. As always, it’s free.
The works feature multimedia, sculpture, installation, performance and community projects. The show sets up each year at different locations, which previously have included downtown Broad Street and Jackson Ward, Shockoe and Great Shiplock Park, and the riverfront near Tredegar and Scott’s Addition.
This 2022 version underwent curatorial discernment from the team of Tiffany E. Barber, an assistant professor of African American art at the University of California Los Angeles, and Wesley Taylor, an associate professor of graphic design at Virginia Commonwealth University.
“About half the accepted artists come from the gallery’s invitation, and the other half through the directory of the curators,” says Emily Smith, gallery director. This method was adopted in 2019 for InLight's Chimborazo Park exhibition, to both cast the net wider but also focus on site-specific work. “This way it’s conceptually tied to the place rather than being purely light-based.” The work will be primarily grouped around the loop road near the gatehouse and Hermitage Road entrance.
The event begins on Friday, with InLight’s traditional Lantern Parade for youngsters and trucks offering food and beverages.
InLight’s 15 participating artists and collectives will shine their beams on the space’s history, environment and recreational use.
During the 18th century, the 262 acres formed part of the Young family’s Westbrook estate. During 1800, enslaved persons gathered here for fish fries and religious meetings. Out of these occasions arose the plan by Gabriel, a blacksmith enslaved by the Prosser family, for those held in bondage to rise up, kill their owners, capture Virginia Gov. James Monroe and demand that he end slavery. The revolt was interrupted by remnants of a tropical storm that washed out bridges and made roads impassable. Further, two of the men involved reported the plan to authorities. In the end, more than 20 enslaved people were executed, including Gabriel, on Oct. 10, 1800.
Among the InLight artists addressing this history is Richmonder Elizabeth Coffey, with “Another World,” which utilizes oil paintings with programmable lights, the work inspired by Gabriel’s patience and defiance.
The lands later became part of Rosewood, home of the Mordecai family. During the Civil War, troops from both sides of the conflict camped there.
In 1909, Belle Stewart Bryan purchased the site that she and her sons then donated to the city in memory of her husband — lawyer, industrialist and publisher Joseph Bryan. A respected community member and philanthropist, Bryan fought for the Confederacy and afterward advocated for the pro-Confederate “Lost Cause.”
The park, designed in the English naturalistic landscape tradition, in subsequent years became an auto camp when Depression-era federal relief programs brought improvements. Robert Harvey, a former city parks superintendent, developed the 17-acre azalea garden, which during the 1950s and 1960s evolved into a popular Azalea Festival. The azaleas, however, followed the park into neglect until community members organized in support. Now the park is a center for birding, disc golf, soccer and the appreciation of fauna and flora.
For InLight, North Carolina multimedia artist Nyssa Collins is creating papier-mache “Mega Fauna” sculptures lighted from within, depicting big prehistoric plants. Zalika Azim, with roots in Aiken, South Carolina, and Trinidad and Tobago, addresses the recreational aspect through a “kinetic double dutch machine,” as Smith describes. Gene A. Felice II + Coaction Lab of North Carolina are presenting performances on a floating dock in the pond at the end of the circle. This will involve an artist in a white wetsuit upon which images are projected.
Several weeks prior to the exhibition, Holden Treadway, of Wilmington, North Carolina, buried film footage he shot, to allow the soil and weather to change the imagery. His piece, “Propagate One,” is a three-channel video projection.
