Exquisite Nashville

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents Exquisite Nashville, an exhibition of collaborative artworks created by four Nashville community organizations that celebrates the city’s dynamic cross-cultural interactions and creative potential in the 21st century. Inspired by the Exquisite Corpse—a creative game conceived by Surrealist artists and writers in the 1920s—Exquisite Nashville contains imaginative reflections of Nashville’s various communities, including longtime residents, immigrants, refugees, and homeless individuals and families. The exhibition will be on view in the Center’s free Conte Community Arts Gallery from March 13 to July 5, 2015. 

The Exquisite Nashville project brought together participants of all ages from the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee, Conexión Américas, the Edmondson Pike Branch of the Nashville Public Library, and Room in the Inn. Working with Middle Tennessee teaching artists Kaaren Hirschowitz Engel, Sisavanh Houghton, Meghan O’Connor, and Jamaal Sheats, each organization initiated a work that traveled to the other three groups for their respective contributions and alterations. The completed works explore themes such as the idea of home, identity and nationality, and are done in a variety of media, including fabric, metal tooling, paint on linoleum, mixed media drawings, and wood sculpture. “The project demonstrates that the input of many people could result in a more imaginative work than that produced by a single artist or writer,” says Shaun Giles, Frist Center Educator for Community Engagement. “Exquisite Nashville brought participants together in a spirit of exchange, with the hope of inspiring our visitors to see their world in new ways through art.”