In Unbound Narratives: Embodied Language, curator Karen Comer Lowe brings together artists February James, Bethany Collins, Gabi Madrid, and a’driane nieves. Across film, mixed media, painting, and works on paper, the exhibition grounds the ways each artist translates embodied experience into visual and linguistic forms.
nieves’ i find myself suddenly swinging… (2024) represents a focal point of the show, both for its monumental scale and strikingly long title.[1] Sweeping shades of pink, orange, blue, and red paint accumulate into a layered expression characterized by grief and rage. The painting’s intensity underscores the invisible labor of rendering such a massive work, while upholding movement and force through charged brushstrokes.
Positioned beside nieves is work by Bethany Collins, who examines the relationship between identity and language. In So What Are You (White Noise) (2012), Collins deconstructs the racially charged question often directed at Black people to interrogate their racial and ethnic identity. The text materializes in chalklike acrylic markings over repetitious, overlapping script on a black canvas. Collins’ work exudes discipline, both in her hand and effort to exercise creative authority over the question, “So what are you?” By stripping the text of its oppressive power, Collins shifts its meaning to take a form of its own. She uses cursive penmanship to cover the background of the painting, challenging this narrative in a manner that feels raw and brilliant.
Known for her figurative paintings, February James extends her creative practice to explore themes of restraint and stillness in her new debut stop-motion film titled All of my Stuff, All of your stuff too (2026). The work presents sculpted and animated characters, with a camera grid as a second character that mediates the emotional landscape of the film. A departure from the text-based languages in the show, James’ piece registers as an open, cinematic space to reflect and listen. It represents a gentle invitation to rest and wander amidst the slow movements where one of the characters waters flowers while wrapped in the sonic backdrop of Erykah Badu’s song, “20 Feet Tall.”
Gabi Madrid’s pieces from their Mourning After (2025) series ground the exhibition in emotional healing. Madrid inscribes text from their personal journaling practice onto two headboards and a bed frame. The works feature messages about embracing trust, love, and faith, while encouraging solace in the face of light, dark, and the unknown. Through her use of antique material, memory, and text, Madrid renders a series characterized by messaging that confronts a personal experience and speaks to broader cultural memory surrounding the #MeToo movement.
Together, the works in Unbound Narratives: Embodied Language demonstrate how artists transform storytelling into visual languages capable of reclaiming authority and exercising complete artistic autonomy. Across the exhibition, embodiment is expressed through mark-making, rich paint colors, text-based inscriptions, and the moving image. What it offers is a compelling meditation on the capacity of language as a tool to promote personal and cultural narratives that are influenced by powerful themes of identity, the Self, healing, and transformation.
[1] Full title of artwork by a’driane nieves, “i find myself suddenly swinging between the enormity of this grief and the inconsolability of this rage that I cannot seem to shake no matter how much I scream or flail my body in protest of all we’ve been forced to endure and witness during these years. Survival has become a prison and a gravity well swallowing me and all of our dreams whole,” 2024.
Unbound Narratives: Embodied Language is on view at Atlanta Contemporary through May 17, 2026.
