A companion art exhibition to Many Waters: A Minnesota Biennial, also currently on view at NewStudio and the M, Minnesota.

In 2019, an extensive network of artists brought all their senses to the Mississippi River, paddling downstream in canoes, venturing up multiple tributaries, clambering over collapsing infrastructures, trudging in its muddy banks, and experiencing the river’s seasonal pulse. From the Headwaters in Minnesota to the Bird’s Foot Delta in New Orleans, research hubs delved deep into written and oral histories, and created works of all kinds, including guided tours, performances, pamphlets, lectures, shared meals, and temporary shows for visitors and local inhabitants. Concerns ranged across river ecologies, Indigenous, Black and settler-colonial histories, agriculture, urbanization, engineering, state and corporate violence, and the overflowing of liberation struggles that continue today. How to put all that into a single retrospective? What has been developed is an artist-run exhibition curating both new and existing works, gathering energy with an opening in Minneapolis before setting out on meanders further downstream. Love and chaos are the keys. Welcome to the OVERFLOW.

Participating artists:

Kayla Anderson, Sara Black, Jeremy Bolen, Nick Brown, Jennifer Colton, Adam Crosson, Annie-Laurie Erickson, Beate Geissler, Amber Ginsburg, Ryan Griffis, Derek Hoeferlin, Brian Holmes, Sarah Kanouse, Jenny Kendler, John Kim, Brian Kirkbride, Emily Knudson, Sarah Lewison, Margarida Mendes, Marlena Novak, Steve Rowell, Oliver Sann, Michael Swierz, Joe Underhill, Monique Verdin, Joslyn Willauer, Paul Wu, Andy Yang, Jay Alan Yim

Acknowledgements:

The exhibition was conceived in parallel to Many Waters: A Minnesota Biennial at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, July 24–October 2, 2021.

The first iteration of this project unfolded in 2019 under the title Mississippi. An Anthropocene River with extensive input and support from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany, and from the Augsburg University River Semester and the Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University in New Orleans. For documentation of this transdisciplinary continental-scale cultural program, see the Mississippi. An Anthropocene River project page.

The show is only open on Thursdays according to the following schedule.

Contact: John Kim jkim5@macalester.edu

Image shows Cancer Alley: From Istrouma to the Gulf of Mexico (2020) by Monique Verdin: https://www.moniqueverdin.com/.