Nikol Hristova
Staff Writer
Beyond typical oil paint on canvas, artist Kristine Potter uses murder ballads, studio portraiture and landscape photography to tell a story while leaving the plotline and characters to the viewer’s interpretation. Currently on display at the University Art Gallery, the art exhibit “Dark Waters” “plumbs the relationship between culture and landscape, and specifically that between gendered violence and the Southern landscape.”
Raised in Georgia, Potter stated that she is familiar with the underlying current of Southern trauma depicted in her work. In this story, the relationship between victim, oppressor and observer is ambiguous, prompting the viewer to decipher the dynamics of that relationship.
Kailie Kelsey (C ’27), UAG work-study student, discussed the core of the exhibition, saying “how inherent narrative shapes not only our understanding of place, but our lived experience within it.” The main focus becomes not the landscape itself but, as Kelsey puts it, “reflect(s) an embodied experience of moving through it.” Her three words to describe the exhibition are “striking, atmospheric, Southern.”
University Art Gallery Director Dr. Shelley MacLaren gives us more context about the show. She shared that “the exhibition tells several stories. How these stories come together or intersect will be different for different people experiencing the show.” The viewer is invited to “fill in the empty spaces.”
She identifies multiple themes. Firstly, she points out “the cultural information we bring with us when we experience a place… because Kristine grew up near Murder Creek, she began the project thinking about how that place name affects how one experiences the space. If that place name makes someone visiting it afraid, then that is its own kind of violence.”
Appalachian murder ballads are traditional songs that tell the story of gruesome deaths of women. Although Appalachian murder ballads are regionally specific, MacLaren recognizes how “we can think of other examples across the genres. Many television shows, for example, tell similar stories and these are extremely popular.”
The theme of violence is prevalent in this exhibition, presented through the recorded performances of murder ballads. MacLaren sheds more light on their purpose: “Violence against women is the core of these stories. All of that cultural baggage of the murder ballads and place names changes how women are invited to experience places.”
But where do these murder ballads originate from? English Professor Stephanie Batkie explains that the theme of violence against women dates back to the Classical Period. The Roman poet Ovid, for example, wrote a collection of poems about Greek and Roman female mythical figures (“Heroides”) through their perspective. He describes how their lovers have mistreated or abandoned them. In one poem, Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, describes herself as a ‘poor widow in my tedious loom.’
Batkie then enlightens us that this theme is continued in Medieval Literature, where elegies and even ‘Pregnancy Carols’ describing women getting pregnant and seeking abortion become popular.
In short, Batkie explains that “Appalachian folk songs usually have older versions because the people who moved there from Scotland and Northern England brought them to North America.” She believes that, in their very essence, “these stories commemorate women’s suffering.”
Considering this, can a person who is not from the South identify with the exhibition? According to MacLaren, “yes, absolutely. While Kristine Potter is thinking about murder ballads and the Southern landscape, these songs and stories have long traditions in many places.”
On Sept. 17, Kristine Potter presented her show in the University Art Gallery. When asked about the meaning of the show, she said “I want [the viewer] to feel something. So then the mind begins to ask, “why do I feel this way?” I am not telling you how to think about them. Putting pictures together in a room means they don’t talk of each other, but they bring their own context and story.”
Potter creates this story that speaks for itself but also invites the viewer to interpret it through their own experiences, identities and memories. “Dark Waters” will be on display through Oct. 14.