Colonies by Catherine Edgerton

About The Exhibit

In Colonies, Catherine Edgerton shares five large oil-painted self portraits and a series of prints from handmade collage books.

In each painting, a figure passively interacts with watercolor and ink drawings of bleaching and diseased coral colonies made from Edgerton’s underwater photographs. Their faces are masked by a graphite archetype that represents cunningness, power, sneakiness, mistrust, or compliance. By palpating the colors and layers of her own body, Edgerton explores the depths of their personal stake in dismantling white supremacy culture.

Colonies explores the tension between the construct and reality of whiteness. While the idea of whiteness is a hoax, its effects on our bodies and the environment are viscerally real.

About the artist

Catherine Edgerton (she/they) has been inking, layering and stitching mixed-media chronicles into hand-bound books since age fourteen. Her main areas of focus are race, the sea, and spiritual dis-ease in a sick society. In expansion of this work, Edgerton invites lens-shifting through stained glass. They use transparent objects—bug wings, film slides, brake lights—to build kaleidoscopes and TV lanterns, juxtaposing the mundane with play to create surreal visions of patterns and light.

Edgerton does much of her work in and with community. In 2014 she co-founded the Durham Art Asylum, which builds creative pathways and reduces isolation among folks who struggle with mental health and addiction. This formation initiated ongoing projects in collaboration with local movement organizations involving giant kaleidoscopes, abolitionist SCUBA diving, and creative psychiatric advance directives. They currently work with Gallery of the Streets, an evolving network of artists, activists, organizers, scholars, cultural workers, and community supporters committed to exploring radical possibilities within Black geographies.