UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Book Signing for ‘The Archive as Liberation’ with Aaron Turner and Light Work
Exhibition Date:
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Book Signing for ‘The Archive as Liberation’ with Aaron Turner and Light Work
Join BAXTER ST and Light Work Wednesday July 23rd from 5 PM-7 PM at 154 Ludlow Street to celebrate the release of The Archive as Liberation with a signing by the book’s editor, Aaron Turner. The Archive as Liberation brings together a dynamic group of artists and writers to engage in dialogue around archival photographic methods. This dialogue also includes the participants’ role in documenting, interrogating, and understanding experiences, both individual and collective.
This publication includes work by artists Andre Bradley, Chisato Hughes, calista lyon, Raymond Thompson Jr., Harrison Walker, and Savannah Wood, alongside writing by Andrew Martinez, Alec Kaus, Aaron Turner, Amelia Wallen, and Wendel White, and a foreword by the book’s editor, Donasia Tillery.
The Archive as Liberation’s elegant structure and design come from the keen eye of Elana Schlenker.
The Archive as Liberation was organized by Aaron Turner, founding director of the Center for Art as Lived Experience (CALE). CALE is a multidisciplinary visual arts research center based in the School of Art at the University of Arkansas. It promotes innovative ideas on the integration of the arts in communities and pedagogy by emphasizing the intersections of art and lived experience. The Archive as Liberation is the center’s first research publication in collaboration with Light Work.
Aaron Turner is a photographer, educator, and independent curator, born and raised in the Arkansas Delta. Turner holds an MA from Ohio University and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. In his studio practice, he uses the 4×5 view camera to create still-life studies on identity, history, abstraction, and archives. He has organized the following selected exhibitions and symposiums: And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora (Phoenix Art Museum, 2022), Time & Empathy: Arkansas Photographer Geleve Grice (University of Arkansas, 2021–22), and Resounding Sovereign Expressions: Resurgent Indigenuity in Ozark Arts Practice & Scholarship (University of Arkansas, 2025). He most recently joined the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design as an assistant professor.
Light Work’s mission is to provide direct support to emerging and under-recognized visual artists working in photography and related lens based media through artist residencies, exhibitions, projects, and publications. Light Work invites twelve artists to participate in the Artist-in-Residence program every year. More than 500 artists have participated at pivotal early stages in their careers.