Artist Spotlight: Michi Meko

 

 

 

Michi Meko is one of the six Southern Black artists exhibiting at the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art from February 13-April 2, 2021. This video includes an overview of these exhibitions followed by an interview with Meko. Michi Meko, a Florence, AL native, is an Atlanta-based artist who has earned national recognition. He has exhibited at museums across the country and was featured as an Artist in Residence on the streaming service Hulu in 2019. Following a near drowning in 2015,

 

Meko’s work began to focus on “the African American experience of navigating public spaces while remaining buoyant within them.” Meko says that his work explores how the “barrage of images” on social media of African Americans being threatened in public spaces “simulates an experience of drowning.”

 

His exhibition at TVMA is titled When It’s Black Outside: Notes from the Before Times, and it has been made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.