ATLANTA, GA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) announces the exhibition opening of 2021-2022 WAP Fellow Zipporah Camille Thompson: The Ocean Wept Rainbows that will begon with an opening reception November 11th and continue through to January 7th, 2023. The 2021-2022 round of WAP Fellows were chosen by Jordan Carter, Curator at DIA Foundation in New York. Major funding provided by the Charles Loridans Foundation, The Antinori Foundation, and the AEC Trust, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Zipporah Camille Thompson is a ceramist, weaver, sculptor, and activist based in Atlanta, Georgia-land of the Muskogee. A native Carolinian, Thompson explores alchemical transformations through clay + textiles, examining marginalized bodies and eliciting social change through her work. Sculpted shapeshifters and hybrid landscapes investigate otherness.
She received her MFA from the University of Georgia and her BFA from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and shown in spaces, nationally and internationally. Zipporah Camille Thompson is a 2021 MOCA GA Working Artist Project Fellow, a 2020 Artadia Atlanta Awardee, a Watershed Zenobia Scholarship Award grantee, an NCECA Multicultural Fellow, and an Idea Capital Travel Grant recipient. Thompson is represented by Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA. She is a history addict, roller-skater, and lover of unicorns, zombies, the moon, tarot and all things fantasy.
MOCA GAs Working Artist Project (WAP) was developed to support of mid-career or established artists in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. The program is funded by the Charles Loridans Foundation, the Antinori Foundation, and the AEC with additional funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. There are a total of 42 fellows over the last 15 years. As a museum that is dedicated first and foremost to supporting Georgias contemporary artists, it is MOCA GAs goal to encourage these artists to remain in our city to establish Atlanta as one of the best cities for launching a viable career in the arts.
THE EXHIBITION
deep and boundless love, like the depths of the ocean.
endless grace and beauty like that of the sky, flowing infinitely like a river. rain is hard and shaped like tears. tastes like saltwater;
a necessary cleanse, a purge,
expelling hate and violence against earth and beings in crisis. a universal symbol of revolutionary hope and acceptance
a prism is a bridge between our world and theirs
although weeping and heartache endures for a great night a sign awaits upon the horizon
my grandmother an ancestral pillar, the backbone makes-do her favorite color, haint-like Carolina blue
a delicate dayflower, burdened and oppressed turning tormented chaos into stillness
she sifts, sieves, and winnows
seed from plant, chaff from grain, dirt from water, wounds from body cultivating victory, hope, and love
radically transforming trauma into triumph.
-for allean
-Zipporah Camille Thompson