Fine Arts Center

Contested Terrains
2023-03-10 - 2023-12-20 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Landscape remains important for contemporary artists, yet many have a dramatically different relationship to the genre. The five artists featured in Contested Terrains acknowledge how human intervention has shaped landscapes across the Americas. Together, these artists extend the potential of landscape as a genre, and allow it to function as an entryway to overlooked histories, acknowledging how politics, power, and extraction have shaped the Americas as we know them today.

Solo(s): Krista Franklin
2023-07-28 - 2023-12-16
Krista Franklin (American, b. 1970) creates books, poetry, collages, handmade paper, installations, murals, performances, sound works, sculptures, and lectures. Solo(s): Krista Franklin draws on the artist’s vast range of materials and references, situated at the intersection of poetics, popular culture, and the dynamic histories of the African Diaspora. Often referring to the performance of a single musician, the exhibition’s title, ​Solo(s) is instead guided by the artist’s commitment to collaboration with fellow artists, writers, and musicians. As a political gesture, Franklin appropriates text and images from vintage magazine articles and other printed matter that she collects. The very act of collaging—cutting, pasting, and juxtaposing—puts Franklin’s works in direct conversation with the materials of other photographers and writers, transporting her to the time of their original publication.

Mi Gente: Manifestations of Community in the Southwest
2023-09-01 - 2024-02-03
Drawing from works in the collection stewarded by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Mi Gente: Manifestations of Community in the Southwest considers community within a landscape that has been shaped by colonization and migration. Focusing primarily on works by Chicanx/a/o, Hispanic, and Mexican American artists based in New Mexico and Colorado, Mi Gente considers the politics and complexities of community, including those who are perceived as outsiders.
Image: Carlos Frésquez, The Obsidian Ranfla Series #3 (detail), 1999, Museum Purchase (Colorado 2000 Purchase Prize), FA 2000.4.
