Bethany Collins
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Biography
Bethany Collins (b.1984) was born in Montgomery, AL and lives and works in Chicago, IL. Collins is a multidisciplinary artist whose conceptual practice examines the relationship between race and language. Centering language-its biases, contradictions, and ability to simultaneously forge connections and foster violence-her works illuminate America's past and offer insight into the development of racial and national identities. Drawing on a wide variety of documents, ranging from nineteenth-century musical scores to US Department of Justice reports, she erases, obscures, excerpts, and rewrites portions of text to bring to the fore issues revolving around race, power, and histories of violence.
Collins’s early series like her 2010 White Noise drawings lay the foundation for her later investigations. Created while pursuing her Master of Fine Arts at Georgia State University, these compositions draw on the artist’s own experience during studio critiques. Using chalk to inscribe and then erase portions of each troubling comment and suggestion white classmates made to her—including, “Do people ever think you’re white?”—Collins describes these drawings as being born from a need to “push language further so it was operating outside myself.”
Externalizing the pain and limits of language, White Noise led Collins to shift from using personal sources in her practice to published texts. Blue Noise (2014–15) revisits celebrated Black science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler’s autobiographical essay “Positive Obsession,” repeating and isolating portions of the text in blue pastel so that it begins to form tangled verbal constellations. For Collins, using blue pastel and ink marked a conceptual shift in her practice. “Blue feels responsive to the . . . coldness of exclusionary language,” she observed in a 2017 lecture, “It’s not inviting; it’s pushing you away.” Expanding on this idea of exclusion, series like The Southern Review (2014–present) and The Birmingham News (2017) draw attention to historical erasure by foregrounding the racial silencing that can occur through editorial decisions.
Also addressing erasure, Collins’s artist books literalize the act by physically removing material. America: A Hymnal collates one hundred different versions of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” written by causes ranging from the Confederacy to the Temperance Movement. Lasering out the musical notes, Collins excises the shared score that united these various adaptations until all that is left are bits of lasered paper—“the dust of language,” in the artist’s words—a charred corpus of past (in)cohesion. “[Erasure] makes me feel I can control a text that feels out of my hands,” Collins explained in a recent interview. “… I feel a physical mastering of language. By deciding what’s legible, I’m dragging out the meaning already there.”
In series like The Odyssey (2018–present), Collins invests the modernist act of erasure with a charged physicality by using her spit to erase the text. This act represents a literal insertion of her body into Homer’s epic while also rendering the poem largely illegible save for isolated lines. These phrases, excerpted from different English versions of the ancient Greek poem, reflect the iterative, mutable nature of translation. Collapsing past and present, Collins’s excerpted lines draw parallels between Odysseus’s perilous journey and the United States’ current incendiary political climate.
Further reflecting on the nature of contemporary America, Collins’s Dixie’s Land (1859–2001) (2020) transposes 10 adaptations of the 1859 minstrel song that became the de facto anthem of The Confederacy into a minor key. The work overlays these mournful scores with drawings of tear gas fired by police during the protests that erupted in Minneapolis, MN after the murder of George Floyd to highlight centuries of racial injustice, disenfranchisement, and violence. Collins’s interest in contrafacta continues in more recent works like her 2022 Star-Spangled Banner panels, which isolate lyrics from different versions of the national anthem to expose the language of violence that bolsters American identity. Layering histories to draw attention to what (and who) is missing, these pieces lay bare the exclusionary foundations upon which the United States is built.
In the last several years, Collins’s engagement with music has expanded to encompass immersive sound installations. Often employing polyphonic singing, works like America: A Hymnal (2019) draw on alternative iterations of popular songs. Eschewing vocal harmony, these installations employ competing voices to examine the language that informs identities, capturing, per Collins, “dissenting versions of what it means to be . . . American bound together.”
Ultimately concerned with what she has termed “the residue of language,” Collins imbues obfuscated traces with a metaphorical weight that challenges established institutions and practices while claiming space for future alternatives. As she concludes, “Everything but words I want you to read.”
Collins’s work is the subject of a solo exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, WA (2024), in recognition of her having won the museum’s Gwendolyn and Jacob Lawrence Prize (2023). Other recent one-person exhibitions include Accord, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, AL (2024); America: A Hymnal, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2023); America: A Hymnal, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK (2021); Evensong, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2021); My Destiny Is In Your Hands, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, AL (2021); Chorus, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO (2019); Benediction, The University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, KY (2019), among others. Other group exhibitions include Prospect.6: the future is present, the harbinger is home, New Orleans, LA (2024); Monochrome Multitudes, Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, IL (2022); The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA (2021), traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2021), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2022), and Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, CO (2022); Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2020), traveled to Seattle Art Museum, WA (2021) and The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2021); Direct Message: Art, Language, and Power, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2019); Parallel and Peripheries, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI (2019); Beyond Boundaries, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2017); and Material Histories,The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY (2014), among others. Collins’s work is represented in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, AL; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Saint Louis Art Museum, MO; Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, IL; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, among others. She is the recipient of many awards and grants, including the Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2022); Lucas Artist Fellowship, Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA (2019); Artadia Award, Chicago, IL and Atlanta, GA (2019 and 2014); and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2015), among others. Bethany Collins is also represented by PATRON Gallery, Chicago, IL.
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Exhibitions
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Bethany Collins
Years 5 April - 16 June 2024 GermantownAlexander Gray Associates, Germantown presents Bethany Collins: Years, an exhibition of recent work by the artist that maps the interconnection between loss and identity. Building on Collins’s first exhibition with...Read more -
Bethany Collins
Undercurrents 26 October - 16 December 2023 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates, New York presents Bethany Collins: Undercurrents, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the Gallery. Undercurrents features new cast paper works alongside a body of song-based drawings and...Read more
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Public Collections
Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, GA
Birmingham Museum of Art, AL
Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Bryn Mawr College, PA
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Illinois State University Special Collections Department, Normal, IL
Kalamazoo Institute of Contemporary Art, MO
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, AL
Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Saint Louis Art Museum, MO
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, IL
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
University of Chicago, IL
University of Virginia Special Collections Library, Charlottesville, VA
William H. Van Every, Jr. and Edward M. Smith Galleries, Davidson College, NC
Yale University Library, New Haven, CT -
Videos
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Bethany Collins on "Accord"
Auburn Forum for Southern Art and Culture, Jule Museum 3 February 2024The Auburn Forum for Southern Art and Culture is the inaugural half-day symposium featuring exhibiting artists and researchers in a series of one-on-one conversations. Part...Watch -
Bethany Collins
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts 10 August 2023Bethany Collins is interested in the unnerving possibility of multiple meanings, dual perceptions and limitlessness in the seemingly binary as a way to address matters...Watch -
Bethany Collins: 2019–2020 Public Humanities Practitioner-in-Residence
Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College 14 November 2019Through support of the Justice, Equality and Community Grant, Bethany Collins is the 2019-2020 Public Humanities Practitioner-in-Residence at Davidson College. While many institutions continue to...Watch -
Artist Talk: Bethany Collins
Art Institute of Chicago 16 January 2019Bethany Collins (American, born 1984) is a multidisciplinary artist whose conceptually driven work is fueled by a critical exploration of how race and language interact....Watch
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News / Events
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Bethany Collins: At Sea
November 14, 2024–May 4, 2025Bethany Collins's solo exhibition, At Sea at the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, will be on view from November 14, 2024–May 4, 2025. The Seattle...Read more -
Bethany Collins
Prospect.6: the future is present, the harbinger is home at Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane September 13, 2024–March 2, 2025Bethany Collins is included in Prospect.6: the future is present, the harbinger is home, will be on view from September 13, 2024 to March 2,...Read more -
Bethany Collins: Accord
Jule Collins Smith Museum Of Fine Arts January 23–June 16, 2024Bethany Collins's solo presentation, Bethany Collins: Accord at the Jule Collins Smith Museum Of Fine Arts in Auburn, Alabama.
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Papercuts
Bethany Collins and Catherine Lord in conversation 15 December 2023Join us at Alexander Gray Associates, New York for a conversation between Bethany Collins and Catherine Lord on Friday, December 15 at 3:00 PM. The talk is organized on the occasion of Undercurrents, Collins’s first solo exhibition with the Gallery, and to celebrate the publication of The Effects of Tropical Light on White Men, Lord’s most recent book.
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Bethany Collins
In Conversation with Amanda Gluibizzi at The Brooklyn Rail 28 November 2023Bethany Collins joins Rail ArtSeen Editor Amanda Gluibizzi for a conversation, concluding with poetry reading by Riel Bellow.
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Bethany Collins
Smart to the Core: Poetry is Everything at Smart Museum of Art September 21, 2023–February 4, 2024Bethany Collins is included in a group exhibition, Smart to the Core: Poetry is Everything at the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois.
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Bethany Collins
Black Writing at Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas August 19, 2023–January 7, 2024Bethany Collins is included in the group exhibition Black Writing at the Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.
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Bethany Collins, America: A Hymnal
Peabody Essex Museum July 1, 2023–OngoingBethany Collins's one person exhibition Bethany Collins, America: A Hymnal at Peabody Essex Museum in Boston, MA.
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Bethany Collins: Tempest
Bryn Mawr College March 17–May 28, 2023Bethany Collins's one-person exhibition Bethany Collins: Tempest at Brynmawr College in Bryn Mawr, PA.
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Bethany Collins
Performance of America: A Hymnal at International Print Center New York 19 January 2023Bethany Collins will perform America: A Hymnal as part of the group exhibition Visual Record: The Materiality of Sound in Print presented by the International Print Center New York.
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Bethany Collins and Jennie C. Jones
Visual Record: The Materiality of Sound at International Print Center New York October 8, 2022–January 21, 2023Bethany Collins and Jennie C. Jones included in the group exhibition Visual Record: The Materiality of Sound in Print at the International Print Center New York.
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Bethany Collins and Jennie C. Jones
Monochrome Multitudes at Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago September 22, 2022–January 8, 2023Bathany Collins and Jennie C. Jones included in the group exhibition Monochrome Multitudes at the Smart Museum of Art at The University of Chicago in Chicago, IL.
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Articles / Reviews
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The Black Female Artists Redefining Minimalism
The New York Times Style Magazine10 May 2024 A new generation of painters and sculptors is finding creative freedom by making rigorously pared-down work. JENNIE C. JONES was... Read more -
Breakthrough Artist Bethany Collins Mines the Poetic Potential of Paper
Artnet News8 November 2023 “Paper is fragile, and it’s temporary. It heals itself but it holds abrasions to its surface,” said Bethany Collins on... Read more -
At Frieze New York 2023, One-Person Shows That Shine
The New York Times18 May 2023 At its debut in 2012, Frieze New York, a spinoff of Frieze in London, came off as an imperious enterprise.... Read more -
Bethany Collins' "America: A Hymnal" Offers Refuge From Basel and American Madness
Miami New Times5 December 2022 Visual artist Bethany Collins knows she's about to be uncomfortable. That's got nothing to do with the themes of race,... Read more -
Podcast: A Conversation with Bethany Collins
Cerebral Women22 June 2022 Ep.112 features BETHANY COLLINS (b. 1984 Montgomery, AL). She lives and works in Chicago, IL. Collins is a multidisciplinary artist... Read more -
Four Gallery Shows to See in the Windy City During Expo Chicago
ARTnews7 April 2022 Bethany Collins at Patron For a pared down exhibition, titled “Cadence,” Bethany Collins thinks through the importance of language in... Read more -
O say can you see, what 100 versions of the Star-Spangled Banner reveal about America
The Art Newspaper8 June 2021 An estimated 800 people waving Confederate flags and Trump banners stormed the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on 6 January.... Read more -
How a Museum Show Honoring Breonna Taylor Is Trying to ‘Get It Right’
The New York Times11 March 2021 “Promise, Witness, Remembrance ” — an exhibition opening April 7 at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky., in honor... Read more -
Collector’s Eye: They Built a World-Class Collection of Black Artists’ Work. Who Are They Acquiring Now?
The Wall Street Journal15 July 2020 Works by Black artists have surged in popularity in recent years, as curators and collectors reappraise their place in the... Read more -
Artist Jacob Lawrence’s ‘Struggle Series’ Offers a Poignant Reminder of Past Challenges America Has Endured
Artnet News20 March 2020 While museums around the globe are closed to the public, we are spotlighting each day an inspiring exhibition that was... Read more -
Lost, and Now Found, Art From the Civil Rights Era
The New York Times10 March 2020 During the civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) — one of the leading black artists of his... Read more -
Jacob Lawrence's 'The American Struggle' Commits The Nameless To Canvas
WBUR25 February 2020 An exhibition of painter Jacob Lawrence is a searing indictment of methodical erasures in our history, and a call to... Read more -
Artadia Names Five Finalists for 2019 Chicago Awards
ARTnews19 June 2019 The New York–based organization Artadia has revealed the five finalists for its annual Chicago awards, which give unrestricted funds to... Read more -
Art by black artists forces a new look at art history in a must-see show at the Smart Museum
Chicago Tribune22 April 2019 Why do collectors collect? “Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection,” a knockout show at the Smart Museum of Art, offers... Read more -
Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection
e-flux19 December 2018 The Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago has commissioned Bethany Collins, Samuel Levi Jones, and Amanda Williams... Read more -
Bethany Collins
Artforum10 December 2018 “I’ve been told that my mother’s name was Millie.” So wrote Lula Montgomery in an 1898 newspaper ad filled with... Read more -
6 Emerging Artists to Seek Out During Art Basel Miami Beach This Week
Artnet News4 December 2018 Sure, most of the popular coverage of Art Basel in Miami Beach centers on C-list celebrities attending over-the-top parties and... Read more -
Bethany Joy Collins: Undersong // Patron Gallery
The Seen29 November 2018 “Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people together. It is the first weapon... Read more -
The art that’s found when other art gets erased, from Marvel to ‘The Odyssey’
The Chicago Tribune2 October 2018 Bethany Collins stood in the middle of the gallery, gesturing at three long off-white drawings. Each had been smeared from... Read more
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