Art is an act of care, archive, and resistance—a way to hold memory, challenge narratives, and build connections across time. In this welcoming conversation, Cinque Hicks and Louis Corrigan respond to Gyun Hur’s Our mothers, our water, our peace within the context of our time, reflecting on how artistic practices shape collective memory and offer spaces for healing and transformation.

Together, they will explore the roles of artists and cultural workers in shaping public narratives, the role of criticism and advocacy in creative communities, and how artistic practice can function as an archive of resilience.

Join us for the start of a communal dialogue that will continue throughout the two-week exhibition here at the Goat Farm Art Center, exploring how art can document, challenge, and reimagine our shared histories.

About the speakers

Louis Corrigan is an Atlanta-based writer. He is the founder of Flux Projects and publisher, through Possible Futures, of Noplaceness: Art In a Post-Urban Landscape, a groundbreaking survey of Atlanta artists. He has served on the boards of non-profit arts organizations such as Art Papers, ArtsATL and ACP.

Cinqué Hicks has a distinguished record in engaging the public in the arts. He began writing about art in 2003 after several years as a practicing artist. His self-published blog Bare and Bitter Sleep was one of the pioneering art blogs of the early 2000s. His follow-up blog Electric Skin: Black Art and Technoculture News from the Front Lines was named by Raphael Rubinstein in Art in America as one of the top ten art blogs most worth daily reading. His follow-up publication, Code Z: Black Visual Culture Now, was one of the first online art publications of the mid-2000s and included interviews and profiles of Wangechi Mutu, Deborah Roberts, Julie Dash, Kojo Griffin, Fahamu Pecou and others.

He has served as senior contributing editor of the International Review of African American Art, interim editor-in-chief of Art Papers, and recently as the editor of ArtsATL. A graduate of Harvard University’s comparative literature program, Hicks also holds a master’s degree from Georgia Tech, where he studied digital media art. In 2011, he was the founding creative director of Atlanta Art Now and co-author of its landmark volume, Noplaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape. From 2008 to 2012, Hicks was an art critic, arts writer, and columnist for Creative Loafing and has written for a variety of national and international publications including Public Art Review, Art in America, Artforum.com, and Artvoices.

Hicks also has an extensive background in ballet and modern dance, choreography, theatrical production and acting, and classical music performance (viola). He spent years in the trade publishing industry and ran a business as graphic artist and typographer.

In 2008 Hicks co-founded Idea Capital, an organization facilitating small cash grants to Atlanta-area artists. He has also served on the gallery committee for VSA Arts of Georgia, the Emerging Artist Award committee for Forward Arts Foundation, the advisory committee for the Emory University Center for Creativity and Arts, and the curatorial advisory committee of the Hammonds House Museum.

Gyun Hur is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator whose biographical context as a first generation immigrant growing up in the American South largely informs her practice and pedagogical approach.

Gyun completed Art Farm Serenbe Residency, Stove Works Residency, NARS Foundation Residency, Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship, Pratt Fine Arts Residency, BRICworkspace, Danspace Project Platform Writer-in-Residency,  Ox-Bow Artist-in-Residency, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the recipient of Artadia, AHL Foundation Artist Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, Faculty Research Funds (Parsons School of Design), and the inaugural Hudgens Prize. Her works have been featured in Hyperallergic, The Cut, Art In America, Art Paper, Sculpture, Art Asia Pacific, Public Art Magazine Korea, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Yahoo! Tech, Huffington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Pelican Bomb, Creative Loafing, Jezebel, and The Atlantan. Her interest in art making in public space led her to various artist presentations at the TEDxCentennialWomen, the international street art conference Living Walls: The City Speaks, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, The New School, and many others. Gyun has contributed as an artist-writer in fLoromancy, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Forgetory.

Born in South Korea, she moved to Georgia at the age of 13. She currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Parsons School of Design, The New School as an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts.

Photos by JP Hessell (Corrigan) and Mackenna Lewis (Hur)