For three weeks last summer, Virginia-based Kevin Jerome Everson visited Buffalo where he completed work on AMC, his 2009-10 Hallwalls Artists-in-Residence Project. What was originally proposed as a short film examining the migration of African-Americans from the agrarian South to the industrial North—in particular the automobile industry of along the Great Lakes—developed into a much larger project over the course of his residency. Kevin shot several films were location in and around Buffalo—from the country side of East Angola, to Buffalo's East Side—with the help of community organizations such as Ujima Theater, the Langston Hughes Center, and Shakespeare in the Park. Several of the films included a group of talented young people, including students and recent alumni from Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, who took on significant roles collaborating both behind and in front of the camera.

Production crew on location during the AMC shoot.

For his gallery exhibition at Hallwalls, Kevin returns to Buffalo with what has become an Award-Winning film, Erie, and an exhibition of objects and materials from his films. Central to the exhibition is the billboard, installed for three weeks south of Buffalo along Route 20, depicting an African-American auto worker and advertising jobs in the industry. Both a work of public art and an intervention into our Rust Belt landscape, the installation in an unsettling and uncanny way shed light on the history of our community and the sense of loss and anxiety felt by Americans and Auto Workers last summer. An aspect of his HARP residency, he will continue his work with students from the Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts to realize the creation and exhibition of materials that reflect the themes of Erie, AMC, and Costars—the process of filmmaking, and the role of visual culture on the migration of African-Americans and thus the shaping of American communities.

The Practice of Everyday Life: The films of Kevin Jerome Everson in Artforum


Artists & Communities, a program of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, is made possible by major funding from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation.

Some publications related to this event:
June, July and August, 2010 - 2010