Heartlines

Featuring artists Akea Brionne, Phylicia Ghee, & Savannah Wood

March 13 – April 11, 2023

Opening Reception March 23, 6-8PM in the Julio Fine Arts Gallery

Each year at the Julio Fine Arts Gallery, we present an exhibition that corresponds to the ‘common text’ read by Loyola’s first year students as part of the yearlong first year experience program called Messina. Throughout the year, programming is built around the text, weaving the themes of each year’s common text into the fabric of the education experience for our first years, but also for our whole community on campus and beyond.

This year’s common text, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, provides a rich text with many pathways for thinking about race, gender, identity, colorism, and homeland. But, at its core the book is an exploration and journey of a family. The book tells the story of a family’s past through both connection and disconnection, considering cultural legacy and the place of home, but also racial and generational trauma that the various members of that family must wrestle with as their identity is formed and reformed. In this exhibition, artists Akea Brionne, Phylicia Ghee, & Savannah Wood, like many of the main characters in The Vanishing Half, also trace their family’s histories, grapple with cultural legacy, memory, and racial and generational trauma through their artwork.