MPR News and Sahan Journal recently highlighted Nia-Symonne Gayle ’24 and her senior exhibition project “GOOD Hair,” currently displayed in the Christensen Gallery through February 19. Gayle graduated as an

Read more about the project from or and learn more about Augsburg’s .

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On January 21, the Augsburg Art Galleries will open a new exhibition featuring nine local, Black women and femme designers. TO ILLUMINATE ABUNDANCE, curated by Olivia House ’20 and Silent Fox ’18 of 13.4 Collective, explores what it means to live a life full of love, freedom, and light.

TO ILLUMINATE ABUNDANCE brings together nine Black designers at various stages in their careers. House and Fox invited contributing graphic designers to reflect on and illuminate a text, quote, or lyric that helps imagine what it could look like to move forward and towards more; to help envision what life is like when it feels full. The exhibition features work by Ashley Koudou, Kelsi Sharp, Leeya Rose Jackson, Marcia Rowe ’22, Olivia Anizor, Sabrina Peitz, and Terresa Moses, as well as House and Fox.

“This show is meant to express what our world should be: a world in which Black femmes are able to live a life without pain or suffering; a life full of light,” said House.

An opening reception for TO ILLUMINATE ABUNDANCE will take place on Saturday, January 21. The curators and artists of the show will gather for an artist talk on Thursday, February 2 at the Hagfors Center to contextualize their work and their view of the exhibition within a broader landscape of making, community, politics, and futurism. This event is featured as part of The Great Northern festival, happening January 25–February 5 around the Twin Cities metro area. The Great Northern celebrates Minnesota’s cold, creative winters through 10 days of diverse programming that invigorate mind and body.

The exhibition runs through March 24 in Augsburg’s Gage and Christensen galleries.

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MPLSART.com recently interviewed Khadija Charif and Yasmin Yassin, two Soomaal House of Art fellows whose solo exhibitions are on display through December 14 in the Augsburg Galleries. 

Photographer Yasmin Yassin’s show, “Should Be Good Times,” explores her journey towards motherhood during quarantine, taking viewers physically through a womb-like space with photographs hung from the ceiling. 

“I thought, ‘What if you have to go in and experience the exhibit by using your body and moving through it?’” she told MPLSART.com. “You start at the beginning of this hallway-like gallery space and go all the way down, but you have to move through the pieces as well, and it gets narrower as you go. I wanted to provide that darkness and enclosure, to try and recreate the feeling of spending all that time in my apartment.”

Artist and Poet Khadija Charif’s show, “Strangers of My Sight—In Truth and In Trial” explores “the kindness, love, and short companionship that strangers provide.” The exhibit includes a private space with two chairs and a set of cards which present compelling quotes and questions for visitors to explore. 

“What I hope is that this space allows others to explore conversations with a stranger,” said Charif. “Grab someone you’d like to know, invite them to the table and ask questions. Not the light questions that bore us but the questions that excite us and allow us to deconstruct the barriers we naturally set when we meet strangers.”

The Soomaal Fellowship is a collaboration between Augsburg Galleries and Soomaal House of Art, a Somali artist collective in the Seward neighborhood, that aims to harness the power of art as a tool for intellectual and civic engagement by advocating and advancing the creative development of Somali visual artists. The partnership will continue with new fellows showcasing their work on Augsburg’s campus every 18 months.

Read more on MPLSART.com:

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The article also examines how Tavera’s own cultural heritage has impacted her work; she has dual-citizenship with the U.S. and Mexico. “Art has the capacity to teach non-Latinos about our Latino culture,” Tavera said. “To create a sense of community for Latinos, and to create places for conversation.”

Tavera’s work will be featured in “Reconfiguring Casta,” an exhibit in Augsburg College’s Christensen Center art gallery from February 29 to March 31. A reception will be held at the gallery on March 2 from 4 to 7 p.m. Additionally, Tavera has curated a collection titled, “Sus Voces: Female Printmakers from Mexico” that will be displayed at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking from February 5 to March 27 with a reception on March 4 from 6:30 to 9 p.m.

Read: Visualizing women’s stories on the Minnesota Women’s Press site for further exhibition and event details.

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Collis and Waterkotte are MFA graduates from the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Collis is a former teacher from the Sam Fox School of Visual Art and Design at Washington University in St. Louis, and Waterkotte is an assistant professor of printmaking at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Together, these two artists use a combination of printmaking, photography, and digital technology to create more complex and unique artwork. Each artist brings their own style to the artwork—Collis uses “confetti-like explosions or atmospheric layering of abstract forms” to represent fragmented memories while Waterkotte adds layers of media screen to represent the contemporary world.

Conbere teaches drawing and printmaking at St. Olaf College in Northfield. He has an MFA in illustration and in printmaking. This past year, he was an artist-in-residence in Roswell, New Mexico. His work has also been featured in the Rochester Art Center and will be in the MAEP Gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 2009. Conbere brings a real world vision into his artwork through drawing, printing, and animated panoramas. He creates multiple points of view in each piece, overlapping small pieces of the world, and then leaves it up to the viewer to find the intertwining stories. For Conbere, “The works represent how our world is structured personally and experientially rather than literally or geographically.”

Exhibits are free and open to the public. The gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Go to for more information.

Image caption: Waterkotte, Not to Save Phenomena but to Mislay Them, 2008, unique print, mixed media and collage

Article by Amanda Symes

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