Lonnie Holley
Artist in Residence in partnership with
Edel Assanti and the Festival dei Due Mondi
Lonnie Holley has been making art since 1979, devoted to a practice of improvisational creativity that spans painting, sculpture, filmmaking and music. Adapting found materials, Holley’s works relay histories that are both autobiographical and collective. His oeuvre tackles universal topics such as humanity’s precarious relationships to the natural world and technology, alongside specifically American and personal histories, encompassing the residual effects of the Jim Crow era, the triumphs of the Civil Rights movement, and the ongoing struggles with false narratives around class mobility and race.
During his residency Holley will perform with Nelson Patton at the Festival dei Due Mondi (Auditorium della Stella, Spoleto, 24&25 July – more information here) and we will host a solo concert at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios on 8 July. An open studio event, sharing work from Holley’s residency (painting and sculpture), will also be held at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios on 8 July.
Lonnie Holley (b. Birmingham, AL, 1950) lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. Exhibitions and performances in 2023 include: Souls Grown Deep, Royal Academy, London, and Lonnie Holley: If You Really Knew, North Miami (MOCA). He has recently exhibited at Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, USA (2022); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C, USA (2022); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, USA (2021); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2020); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2020); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2018); MASS MoCA, North Adams, USA (2017); de Young Museum, San Francisco, USA (2017); among many others. His work is in numerous permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Holley’s first film, I Snuck Off the Slave Ship, (2019), premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2019. Artangel commissioned Holley’s song cycle and film titled The Edge of What in 2022. Holley is signed to Jagjaguwar, and lives and works in Atlanta, GA, USA.