Atlanta’s Michi Meko to be featured during TU’s next ‘Art Talks at Six’
Post Published On:Michi Meko’s works engage metaphorically and abstractly with the paradoxes and contradictions that have shaped his personal history and the shared history of Black Americans, particularly in the American South.
At 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 3, Associate Professor Rich Curtis will interview Meko, an Atlanta-based multidisciplinary artist, as part of the “Art Talks at Six” series. The interview can be watched at www.facebookcom/actu31792/live. No Facebook account is required to view.
Meko nearly drowned in 2015, an experience that continues to resonate within his studio practice today. His recent paintings and sculptures focus on the African-American experience of navigating public spaces while remaining buoyant within them. This work contributes to an important conversation, as African Americans in public space are consistently threatened, now more visibly and openly with the evidence and sharing offered by social media.
This barrage of images simulates an experience of drowning under the heavy weight of 10,000 pounds of pressure while being held to the ocean’s floor. Mecko’s work incorporates the visual language of naval flags and nautical wayfinding, combined with romanticized objects of the American South as a means to communicate the psychological and the physical.
“Art Talks at Six” is part of Arts for the Community at Thomas University (ACTU), which is supported in part by Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia Council for the Arts also receives support from its partner agency, the National Endowment for the Arts. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information about this and other ACTU events, visit www.facebookcom/actu31792 or www.thomasu.edu/actu, call 229-227- 6964 or email actu@thomasu.edu.
