Facilitated by Jenny Gerow, Chief Curator at Akron Museum of Art

Grief is an embodied experience—woven into memory, ritual, and creative expression. In this intimate conversation and readings, artists Gyun Hur and Le’Andra LeSeur reflect on how loss, language, and spirituality shape their practices. Rooted in both personal and collective histories, their work engages with themes of mourning, healing, and transformation, particularly within the cultural and geographical landscapes of the American South.

Guided by Jenny Gerow, this discussion will explore how poetics and prayer—both literal and metaphorical—serve as acts of resistance, reverence, and joy. Hur and LeSeur examine intersectional racial grief, considering how histories of displacement, violence, and systemic injustice shape our emotional and physical landscapes. Through storytelling, performance, and visual practice, they reclaim space for remembrance, resilience, and care, offering new ways to hold and honor complex histories.

Join us for a conversation on how grief and poetics intertwine to shape artistic practice, collective memory, and the ways we navigate loss across race, history, and place.

About the speakers

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.

Le’Andra LeSeur is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses a range of media including video, installation, photography, painting, and performance. Her body of work, a celebration of Blackness, queerness, and femininity, seeks to dismantle systems of power and achieve transcendence and liberation through perseverance. Through the insertion of her body and voice into her work, LeSeur provides her audience with an opportunity to contemplate themes such as identity, family, Black grief and joy, the experience of invisibility, and what it means to take up space as a queer Black woman—a rejection of the stereotypes which attempt to push these identities to the margins.

The artist has received several notable awards including the Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2024), Leslie-Lohman Museum Artists Fellowship (2019), the Time-Based Medium Prize as well as the Juried Grand Prize at Artprize 10 (2018). LeSeur has appeared in conversation with Marilyn Minter at the Brooklyn Museum, presented by the Tory Burch Foundation, and has lectured at The New School, NY, NY, and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, among others. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; MFA Boston, Boston, MA; The Shed, New York, NY; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and others. Residencies include Pioneer Works, iLab at The University of the Arts, Visual Studies Workshop, ArcAthens, NARS Foundation, Marble House Project, and MASS MoCA.

Jenny Gerow is the Chief Curator at the Akron Art Museum. Her background in the arts includes nearly two decades of managing and curating exhibitions, with a focus on digital and photographic media. Her work at BRIC in Brooklyn, New York, spanned ten years, where she championed innovative approaches to showcasing contemporary artists, particularly those exploring the intersections of technology, identity, and storytelling through photography and new media.

She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Virginia and an MA in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her deep knowledge of modern and contemporary art, is paired with a dedication to engaging diverse audiences through programming and supporting artists through residencies and professional development. She has previously held positions at the International Center of Photography and the Detroit Institute of Arts. She has presented talks and collaborated with numerous New York institutions including Dieu Donnè, Lower East Side Printshop, Residency Unlimited, A Blade of Grass, Electronic Arts Intermix, Wassaic Project, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum, The Green-Wood Cemetery, and Trestle Gallery.