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"Where I'm From" mini-docuseries.
"Where I'm From":
A Bree Stallings experience.
Opening April 5th, 2019.
C3 Lab - transitional gallery space.
Nestled at the crux of Charlotte's rapidly changing South and West side communities, a co-working and gallery space serves as a hub for the multi-disciplinary artists of the city: C3 Lab, located at 2525 Distribution Street. In the extended transitional gallery space, on April 5th, Bree Stallings hosts her second solo exhibition "Where I'm From". This work delineates from her current work and focuses on her new practices around installation and experiential creation. The work, installed inside a 6,000 square foot former trucking warehouse, will explore the places in which she's lived: her current home now (in the first year she's ever lived alone), the childhood homes she was raised in (none of which still exist or belong to family through foreclosure, and a lack of generational wealth), where she lived when her parents were in-between housing, and more abstractly, the primal areas in which we all live: her own body and her mother's body. 

You enter the space from a loading dock. Along the floor, there is a poem winding through the space, leading you through the exhibition. As you navigate through the space, there will be cylindrical "viewing stations" hanging from the rafters each with a small slit for eyes and ears to look inside and see miniature installations on top of speakers playing the recorded stories of her family. Along the edge of the room, there are huge sheets of fabric hung between the poles dividing the space, each printed with a photograph of one of her family members: the migrant mother from Japan (her grandmother), the red clay potter (her grandfather), and the ones without (her parents). On the back edge of the room, a "wishing wall", a length of fishnet from which will hang hundreds of her family's mementos, photos, letters, secrets and stories. It will be invited for the show participants to do the same, an altar of sorts. Between the viewing stations, there are vintage windows, also hung from the rafters, like a family tree, collaged upon with images of her family members, poems and other small, forget-me-nots.

For the opening night, world renowned poet and spoken word performer Jay Ward will perform his one-man show about growing up being biracial in the south. While the exhibit is on view, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture paired with Alvin C. Jacobs (photographer and resident artist of the “Brookhill Village” exhibition) will host a History of Housing: Displacement and Reclamation. This and other events will have the exhibition as an integral working stage and will explore themes of redlining, homelessness, poverty and more.