Bethany Collins: Tempest
March 17 - May 28, 2023
1912 Gallery
Special Collections, Bryn Mawr College
1st floor of Canaday Library
Artist Bethany Collins (American, b. 1984) exhibits new and recent work, debuting performances of The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Hymnal (2023).
There is the appearance of debris strewn across the surfaces of Bethany Collins’ The Odyssey: 1990/1851/1980/2002/2000. This is not the aftermath of the kinds of battles described in The Aeneid, which in her translation she renders as tender-skinned, deeply-scarred pages. Instead, it is evidence of Collins’ physical deconstruction of the text. For these works, Collins rewrites pages of canonical texts in graphite, only to rub out all but a single passage with pink pearl eraser and her own saliva. The eraser dust and worn paper cling to and give way from the surface, gathering at the bottom of the frames. The text that remains legible reveals disagreement, even contradiction, across centuries of translations of these enduring texts.
Charred scraps of paper gather in the bound margin of a scorched songbook in Collins’ The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Hymnal. This hymnal presents 100 versions of a contrafactum—a song in which the melody remains constant while the lyrics are rewritten over time. Repurposed since the 19th century for causes as incongruous as abolition and the confederacy, the hymnal’s unifying melody has been singed here exactly where it was to be sung. The entangled remnants of the musical notation cling to and tear from one another as the pages are turned. Bound together in disagreement and fragility, the hymnal is emblematic for Collins of American democracy.
These tempest-swept surfaces metaphorize and evince a human struggle to find our way home through language. Collins selects texts that describe experiences of estrangement and of yearning to regain connection. Sometimes these are words that have been deemed worthy of repeating, over and over again in the case of classical texts, or of rewriting, over and over again in the case of contrafacta hymns. Other times, other words, other struggles with the world, with war, and with coming home are collectively forgotten – ephemeral as newspaper windswept through the street. And yet, they too voice a struggle, a plaintive, poignant, personal plea: Do you know them? Can you help me find my people?
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Bethany Collins (1984) is a multidisciplinary artist whose conceptually driven work uses language as a prism through which to explore American history and the nuance of racial and national identities.
Collins was the 2013-2014 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the 2019 Public Humanities Practitioner-in-Residence at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. Collins was awarded the Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2022.
Checklist of the Exhibition
Come Home, Jackson, 2023
Blind embossed on Stonehenge paper
9 3/4h x 6 3/4w in
On loaned from Patron Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
The Aeneid: 2021 / 1697, 2022
Unique screenprint on handmade paper
44" x 30"
On loaned from Patron Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
The Aeneid: 1971 / 1697, 2022
Unique screenprint on handmade paper
44" x 30"
On loaned from Patron Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Hymnal, 2023 Book
6" x 9" x 1"
Edition of 10
Collection of Bryn Mawr College, 2022.6.100
The Odyssey: 1990 / 1851 / 1980 / 2002 / 2000, 2020
Graphite and toner on Somerset paper
Each: 44" x 30"
Collection of Bryn Mawr College, 2022.6.19.1-5
Bethany Collins at Bryn Mawr College
Exhibition
Bethany Collins: Tempest
1912 Gallery, Canaday Library
March 17 - May 28, 2023
On-Campus Display
The Odyssey: 1990/1851/1980/2002/2000 (2020)
Carpenter Library
Ongoing
Artist's Residency
Performances of The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Hymnal (2023)
April 28 - May 2, 2022
Site Visit for Artist's Residency
March 17 - 20, 2023
On-Campus Display
The Odyssey: 1990/1851/1980/2002/2000 (2020) is on longterm display in Carpenter Library (Floor A).
Carrie Robbins interviews Bethany Collins about The Odyssey series
Additional audio from the artist's residencies TK
Artist's Residency
Performances, March 17-20, 2023
The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Hymnal (2023)
- Friday, March 17, 5:30pm
1912 Gallery, Canaday Library
Duet of suffrage and confederate versions
arranged in collaboration with Philadelphia-based composer Peter Christian
- Saturday, March 18, 6:00pm
Bethel AME Church, 50 S. Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr
Choral concert of Mark Twain's anti-imperialist versions
performed by The Unsung, a New York-based music collective
- Monday, March 20, 5:00-8:30pm
Music Room, Goodhart
Endurance singing of all 100 versions
performed by five Bryn Mawr College students
During her residency at Bryn Mawr College, Bethany Collins produced a series of performances of The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Hymnal (2023), a work included in the exhibition at the College. These performances aimed to bring together community participants and audiences in sung versions of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
Written by the abolitionist Julia Ward Howe in 1861, The Battle Hymn of the Republic is perhaps the most familiar early American contrafacta, a musical term referring to a song in which the melody remains constant while the lyrics are rewritten over time. These re-writings, each in support of a passionately held cause—from revolution, suffrage, temperance and Indigenous sovereignty, to the Confederacy and abolition—articulate often contradictory claims of what it means to be American.
Bethany Collins
Bethany Collins (1984) is a multidisciplinary artist whose conceptually driven work is fueled by a critical exploration of how race and language interact. Language is both her subject and primary material—from dictionaries and encyclopedias to literary journals and newspaper archives. Language is also a prism through which she explores American history and the nuance of racial and national identities.
Collins received her BA in Studio Art and Photojournalism from the University of Alabama in 2007, and her MFA from Georgia State University in 2012. She was the 2013-2014 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and 2019 Public Humanities Practitioner-in-Residence at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. Collins was awarded the Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2022, the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship in 2018, and the Hudgens Prize in 2015. Recent solo museum exhibitions include presentations at the Frist Museum, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, CAM St. Louis, The University of Kentucky Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Curator
Carrie Robbins, PhD, Curator/Academic Liaison of Art & Artifacts
Artist Residency Advisory Group
Lela Aisha Jones, Assistant Professor and Director of Dance
Matthew Feliz, Assitant Professor of History of Art and Acting Director of the Center for Visual Culture
Monique Scott, Associate Professor of History of Art and Director of Museum Studies
Graphic Design
Nathanael Roesch
Installation Team
Flannel & Hammer of Philadelphia
All exhibitions and events in Special Collections are supported by the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries.
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