In this round-up, Burnaway staff revisit some of our favorites from 2024.
Favorite Pieces from Burnaway 2024
Courtney McClellan, Editor
An article that expertly relays the complex, fraught history of and renewed artistic interest in textiles in NC.
Isabella Marie Garcia, Editorial Assistant
In Another Place: Benny Andrews and the Practice of Teaching in Prisons by Nadia Scott
In having the privilege to learn about Benny Andrews during a trip to Milwaukee, this feature expands tremendously on his teaching work in the prison system. As an advocate for nontraditional educational spaces, it holistically explains the value of Andrews as a facilitator and mentor for these individuals.
Deathbed Scene by Jacob Todd Broussard at Wolfgang Gallery, Atlanta
I’ve been working on a research fellowship for the second half of the year that ties to artists lost to AIDS, and Jackson’s words through this review bring up echoing questions that I’m still actively thinking about in my own work and the work I’m researching. “The question remains, can you be gay without an archive?”
Mood Ring | And Lumber Would Season The Wallsby Valentina Jager Lopezllera
Valentina powerfully demonstrates the eeriness of Huntsville’s surveillance landscape through sound, flashing gifs, and bilingual prose.
Madeline Benfield, Programs and Operations Coordinator
Dance in the Waterfall at Red Arrow, Nashville by Margaret Jane Joffrion
I resonate so much with Joffrion’s writing tone – her personification sticks with me long after I read her work.
Natalie Willis Whylly. Caribbean Editor-At-Large
Mood Ring | How to Get Free by Kay-Ann Henry
I’m here for anything that celebrates Obeah (rather than perpetuating colonially-rooted maligning the spiritual practice) and its legacies in the everyday. This one did the ancestors proud.
Time functions in such a bizarre way in the Caribbean: we are a space where so many things converge that they collapse – time, continents, memory. Beta Local is an incredible space doing incredible work, and the familiarity and specificity of context (and care) in the back-and-forth of this annotation between writer and artist captures this perfectly.
The Memory of Roses: Recollections with Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter by Kristina Kay Robinson
Minds that enjoy (seemingly) tangential or disparate ideas coming together seamlessly, will love the references that Kristina ties together here. Such an enjoyable and insightful read.
Kristina Kay Robinson. New Orleans Editor-At-Large
Jodi Minnis Rolle: Vexing the Bahamian Hospitality Narrative by Natalie Willis Whylly
Robert Alan Grand, Carolinas Editor-At-Large
Two Days in Montgomery: A Reflection on the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park by Whitney Washington
Expertly weaving personal history, art criticism, and healthy skepticism into a deep dive where every paragraph is better than the last. Washington’s sprawling feature is a good reminder that, “even the best of intentions deserve scrutiny.”
Favorite Non-Burnaway Pieces of 2024
Courtney
Nickel Boys directed by RaMell Ross
It is a visually lush film that is in every way a photographer’s take on film.
North Woods: A Novel by Daniel Mason
The story of a New England house told through the many tales of the people who inhabited it over centuries. Speaking to its power, I felt physically cold the entire time I read it.
Isabella
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
One of my favorite decisions this year was to join a local book club—the MiamiHawtiezz—and this book was our most recent read that resonated deeply with the importance of journalism in this day and age.
Written, poetic ekphrasis about portraiture work with prisoners through tintypes in Louisiana. I’m so grateful this book entered my life this year, thanks to a dear friend who bought it for himself and then re-gifted it my way.
Madeline
This talk about Survivor, streamed during the Triple Canopy Symposium, encapsulates the relationship I have with the show–a deep sustained love, a critical eye, and obsessive scholarly approach.
This year, I went to a Hi Mom screening of shorts by early experimental filmmaker Maya Deren at The Supermarket in Atlanta. I had seen her acclaimed Meshes of the Afternoon but never At Land – a snowball of birth, identity, and journey.
Natalie
On Being Committed To A Small Place by Annalee Davis published by TEOR/ética
I re-read this regularly and it bolsters weary souls doing the work here in the region by making us feel seen and valued).
A Reckoning with Indentureship at The Rijks Museum by Andil Gosine
Dark Exposure: Roberta Stoddart’s The Bertha Room by Isis Semaj-Hall
Pree has some great articles from the region that are written by and catered to a Caribbean (and diaspora) audience.
Kristina
Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide by Fargo Tbakhi
Moving Toward Life by Marina Magloire
The Mouth of Calamaties by Musab Younis
Robert
Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler
A salient look at how inflammatory political rhetoric creates a fantastical boogeyman to fight against equality and progress. A friend told me this was Butler at her most urgent and most readable–it’s how I’ve recommended it ever since.
Fan Fiction: A Satire by Tavi Gevinson
I have a deep appreciation for cultural criticism in unlikely places–and Gevinson’s autofiction about her obsession and possible friendship with Taylor Swift takes the cake this year.
Kurian is a fantastic artist who’s also been writing incisive criticism for years. His clear-cut response is another triumph.
The Resonance Sessions: A Benefit Album for Western NC, Live from Marshall
In the early days of Helene’s aftermath, potter Josh Copus gathered folks at the ravaged Old Marshall Jail Hotel for ballad swaps and full-throated singings, fostering community in an uncertain, tragic time. This is one of the many powerful projects to come out of early relief efforts; western NC will need our attention and support for a long time to come.
Favorite Exhibitions and Sites Viewed in 2024
Courtney
Tina Girouard: SIGN-IN at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana
Joan Jonas: Good Night and Good Morning at MoMA, New York City, New York
Two extensive shows that grappled with how to share performance archives.
Isabella
You enter a red-lit, darkroom-style hallway with very intimate portrayals of erotica and sex on view in the photographs. The context is based in casual encounters between gay men in Mexico City, where Gamez immersed himself inside the dark rooms and photographed them with a strategy of anonymity and ambiguity. While they are sensual, the photographs also speak to how these spaces and saunas can be linked, although not exclusively, to HIV transmission and pose great dangers to queer populations. One of my top finds during my time in Mexico City this year.
Belkis Ayón at David Castillo Gallery, Miami, Florida
What a treat to be able to view these works in-person, and really appreciate how detailed of a printmaking hand and eye for material Belkis had. I also listened to David Castillo talk about managing the artist’s estate at this year’s Miami Book Fair. I commend those who take careful, collaborative approaches to working with the families and loved ones of late artists in order to preserve their lasting legacies.
Brandon Sheats, Executive Director
Delcy Morelos: El abrazo at Dia Chelsea, New York City, New York
It was the scent and the scant space for me.
Robert
Kevin McNamee-Tweed: Saying the Sun at the Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, South Carolina
Rising from the Sifting Screen at Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina
All great exhibitions throughout the Carolinas this year that deserve recognition!
