Exhibitions
BENJY RUSSELL: THE SUN SPEAKS IN THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT
Slocumb Galleries (ETSU) / 232 Sherrod Dr., Johnson City, TN August 25 - September 19th (Reception: September 11 5:00pm - 7:00pm)
Choctaw Benjy Russell
In The Sun Speaks in the Language of Light, Benjy Russell draws parallel between cosmological phenomenon and the root traumas experienced along human timelines— events that affect everyday existence yet are often difficult to pinpoint. These moments can stem from ancestral trauma passed down generationally, childhood trauma, past experiences of death and illness, as well as moments of "root joy" that can shape how we move through life.
This generational work led Russell to uncover his Choctaw family's involvement in the devastating and genocidal Trail of Tears, ending in Oklahoma; his family's land allotment under the detrimental policy of dividing shared reservation land into private ownership; and his grandmother and great-grandmother's forced attendance at a Catholic Indian Boarding School near his hometown. The latter was an instrumental tool in the erasure of Indigenous culture and the loss of generational knowledge in his family-and Indigenous families across Turtle Island (a term for North and Central America used by many Indigenous peoples).
The work in The Sun Speaks in the Language of Light, finds Russell taking traditional Choctaw crafts such as basket weaving, pottery, beadwork, and embroidery (practices that take elements of nature to create art and symbology through repetition) and pulling them into three-dimensional sculptural works and photographic "drawings" using a wide variety of materials. These materials speak to his own complex history as a queer rural artist, raised on the Chickasaw reservation, who would later become a widower and AIDS survivor. This Venn diagram of identities and histories takes the form of geometric goddess figures constructed from lighting gels commonly used in gay bars and nightlife culture; multi-panel pieces featuring his HIV medication photographed on velvet, reading more like embroidery than photographs; kaleidoscopic sets made of mirrors and roses whose logistics are impossible to discern; and blocks of bulletproof acrylic floating effortlessly in space.
The Sun Speaks in the Language of Light, is both a meditation on trauma and a celebration of the joy that can arise rom our shared human experience. Through this innovative body of work, Benjy Russell invite viewers to embark on a journey of reflection, healing, and h o p e - a journey from darkness into reimagined future.
Benjy Russell is a self-taught, multidisciplinary queer artist and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He was raised in Lindsay, Oklahoma—a small rural sundown town on the Chickasaw Reservation. For the past 17 years, Russell has lived in rural Tennessee within an intentional queer community. As an artist, his practice incorporates photography, sculpture, set design, and ecological land art.
"My work is deeply informed by the intersection of philosophy, science, and art—an approach that allows me to view the world through a prism of possibility, questioning and unlearning harmful, outdated social structures. Science fiction has long served as a guiding framework offering a vision of how we might shape the future by first imagining it. In creating fictionalized versions of the future, we take the first step toward manifesting it into reality."
Much of his photography practice involves practical, or in-camera, effects—using materials like sculpture, lighting, wires, and mirrors to push the boundaries of what photography can achieve and to evoke a sense of magical realism. By creating physical moments of impossibility, he invites the viewer to consider alternative realities and expanded possibilities. His work seeks to capture the joy and wonder of existence, offering glimpses of both the present and a reimagined future.
