One Last Smile Before the Undertow

In response to the Black Lives Matter uprising occurring across the world due to the countless and senseless deaths of black people at the hands of police, we are revisiting an exhibition from 2017. That January, directly after the inauguration of Donald Trump, Atlanta-based artist, Michi Meko, debuted a new suite of works at the Dodd Galleries addressing black life in America post-Obama. Due to recent events, finding the show so prescient, we reached out to Meko with the idea to repost the exhibition. He agreed: "Go for it!," he wrote in an email. "It's the perfect time."

A Message From the Lamar Dodd School of Art

The Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia stands in solidarity with our students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and with communities across Athens, Georgia, and the Nation in this moment of despair. We recognize the long and deep history of oppression that has brought us to this moment and stand against all forms of inequality that position some communities against others.
 

Mors Scena

Empty of people, what remains is the setting. A room full of curtains, fabric, so much fabric, low lighting and the displays which indicate opulence. Theater in death, the performance of grief. For the past two years, Rachel Cox has driven around Texas and now Iowa, stopping to photograph funeral homes in rural towns. Cox first noticed these strange spaces when working on an earlier photo project, Shiny Ghost, which documented her grandmother’s illness and eventual death.

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