The ARTISTS & WORKS of ‘Free as They Want to Be’

works from thirty artists across three sites

Baton Rouge Gallery – center for contemporary art (“BRG”), Southern University, and The West Baton Rouge Museum are proud to co-host a special limited-run presentation of the exhibition, Free as They Want to Be: Artists Committed to Memory (curated by Deborah Willis, Ph.D. and Cheryl Finley, Ph.D.)

This exhibition includes artists working in photography, video, projection, sculpture and mixed media installation. The themes explored by these artists are as wide-ranging as their aesthetic practices are, while also being deeply informed by a fierce engagement with archival research. The exhibition creates a framework in which to reimagine and reflect on historical events, as well as public and personal memory.

The curators have also added works from local artists and from local collections specifically for the Baton Rouge adaptation of the exhibition. An additional work from Bisa Butler is generously being loaned by The Gordon Parks Foundation for the exhibition.

To see the full exhibition, visitors must visit all three sites:

FEATURED ARTISTS

SELECTED WORKS

In concert with the exhibition’s originating curators and in partnership across three local organizations situated on historically significant sites, the exhibition is being adapted for a first-of-its-kind, site-specific presentation in southern Louisiana. Led by Baton Rouge Gallery – center for contemporary art (“BRG”), this presentation will simultaneously acknowledge the local relevance of the themes addressed by the originating curators while supplementing them with works from respected artists based in southern Louisiana.

Free as They Want to Be: Artists Committed to Memory originated as a FotoFocus exhibition at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, Ohio on the occasion of the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial. The traveling exhibition is organized by Curatorial Exhibitions, Pasadena, California.