Gordon Coons (Ojibwe, b. 1949), We Cannot Be Redacted, 2019. Relief print. 41.5 × 29.5 in. (104.41 × 74.93 cm). Courtesy of John Campbell and Colette Hyman.
A Nation Takes Place
Exhibition and Book Launch and Reception
Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona Minnesota
Thursday, August 22 | 5p - 8p
with Curators Tia-Simone Gardner and Shana M. griffin
Performance by Li(sa E.) Harris and Convocation by Seitu Jones
Catering by Krewe, Chef Mateo Mackbee
Free with MMAM Admission | Registration Requested
Remote live cast option (645p Gallery Chat with the Curators)
Kindly note that registration is available for online participation in the September 22 event. Advance registration is closed for in-person attendance, but there will be a limited number of standing-room tickets available at the front desk on a first come basis.
After more than two years of conversation with interlocutors at institutions, initiatives, and projects, interrogating and exploring the creative possibilities of marine art beyond portraits of ships at sea, co-curators Tia Simone-Gardner (St. Paul, MN) and Shana M. griffin (New Orleans, LA), alongside the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, invite you to an intimate exhibition opening and catalog launch for A Nation Takes Place.
With support from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment For the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, and the Terra Foundation for American Art, this groundbreaking exhibition features nearly 70 works of art by 38 artists who draw critical attention to the connection between water and nation, water and sovereignty, and water and reimagined ecologies.
The event also includes the launch an accompanying catalog, A Nation Takes Place: Navigating Water and Race in Contemporary Art, distributed by the University of Minnesota Press, featuring essays and reflections by Tiffany Lethabo King, Katherine McKittrick, Brenda Marie Osbey, Erin Sharkey, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tia Simone-Gardner, and Shana M. griffin, on the complexity of the United States’ formation, a project unthinkable without waterways, conquest, and slave ships.
Following a riverside convocation by multidisciplinary artist, advocate and maker, Seitu Jones (St. Paul, MN), and a live gallery performance by Li(sa E.) Harris (Houston, TX), Gardner and griffin will share the stage to amplify the generosity, scholarship, activism, and curatorial approaches that went into this project, resulting in new artist commissions, artist residencies, and national convenings.
5p - Doors and Catering by Chef Mateo Mackbee of Krewe (St. Joseph, MN)
6p - Riverside Convocation of ArtARK by Seitu Jones (St. Paul, MN)
6:30p - Live Gallery Performance by Li(sa E.) Harris (Houston, TX)
6:45p - Livecast Gallery Chat with Co-Curators, Tia Simone-Gardner and Shana M. griffin
7:30p - Book Signing
8p - Close
About the curators and artists
Tia-Simone Gardner is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and undisciplined Black feminist geographer, committed to understanding relationships between Blackness and landscape. She is a 2023–24 McKnight Visual Artist Fellow. Her work has shown both nationally and internationally, and her writing has appeared in Georgia, an independently published arts writing journal, and New Suns, a journal published by USA Artists. Gardner is an assistant professor of media and cultural studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN.
Shana M. griffin is a Black feminist activist, researcher, geographer, sociologist, abolitionist, and artist. Her practice is interdisciplinary, research-based, and decolonial, existing across the fields of sociology, geography, Black feminist thought, and land-use planning and within movements challenging displace- ment, carcerality, reproductive control, climate impacts, and gender-based violence. She is the recipient of several awards, including a 2025 Loeb/ArtLab Fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2022 Andy Warhol Curatorial Research Fellow, and 2021 Creative Capital Awardee.
Seitu Ken Jones is a multidisciplinary artist, advocate and maker based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Working between the arts and public spheres, Jones channels the spirit of radical social movements into experiences that foster critical conversations and nurture more just and vibrant communities from the soil up. He is recognized as a dynamic collaborator and a creative force for civic engagement.
Li(sa E.) Harris (b. 1981, Houston, TX) is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and researcher who uses voice, theremin, electronics, movement, improvisation, meditation, and new media to explore healing in performance and living. She is the founder/creative director of the multidisciplinary creative arts studio Studio Enertia. Her awards include a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and the 2021 Dorothea Tanning Award in Music/Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Her recent solo exhibitions include Unlit: Sof Landin (Ballroom Marfa, 2023), D.R.E.A.M.= A Way to Afram (Diverse Works, 2023), and This is the Day (Lawndale Art Center, 2024).
Chef Mateo Mackbee, co-founder of Krewe, developed a deep love for New Orleans' culture as he spent the summers of his youth watching his grandfather cook for family and friends throughout the city. A native of Bloomington, MN, Chef Mackbee heeded the call to follow the family tradition of nourishing appetites and feeding souls in 2008, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Support for this exhibition comes from
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.