Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice

En route to Venice 🌅 Fondazione Giorgio a Armanda Marchesani May 10–July 10, 2026 As an expansion of their contribution to the Biennale Arte 2026, María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Kamaal Malak, through Vanderbilt’s Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice, present Resonance: an exhibition and public program series that brings Vanderbilt and Nashville into dialogue with global artists, showcases the university’s talent and contributes to the wider dialogue about the future of art. (VU) Curated by Grace Aneiza Ali and Selene Wendt 🧡 Inlcuded in the exhibition is No Ordinary Sunset, 2024, archival pigment print from my new Non-Aligned Visualities series. The series is inspired by the four yearlong collaborative research project Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS Žeželj between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola, exhibited at the Museum of African Art in Belgrade Serbia and the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice Begonia Labs in Nashville, US in 2025. Also showing Searching for a perfect sunset, nine archival pigment prints that feature an experimental work artist produced in Joshua Tree, CA in 2022, during a residency at BoxoPROJECTS art program. A grid of nine color photographs presents a performative quest to frame a perfect sunset in the Joshua Tree Park, using a box of vintage 35mm slides sourced off eBay. On May 20, I will do a participatory performance Searching for a Perfect Sunset (Venice), inspired by the two works in the exhibition. Taking images of sunsets at different locations in the city, and with various media including Polaroid, disposable cameras, black and white film, and color transparency, I will ask the participants to write and share a memory. With each sunset, something is lost but a sense of hope, promise and renewal remains. I am grateful to Monika Lang, Belgrade based illustrator for creating unique design solution for a participatory performance Searching for a Perfect Sunset (Venice). 25 unique art objects are produce at Vanderbilt The Wond’ry with the magic touch of Alexandra Sargent Capps. Essay by Jelena Vesić 🌅🧡 @monik_lang @anelej_cisev_ @alexandra.s.capps @eadj.program @vanderbilt.art @vuartsci @vanderbiltu 🌅🧡✨

Resonance, presented by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and Kamaal Malak, is co-curated by Grace Aneiza Ali and Selene Wendt and is part of Engine for Art Democracy and Justice, founded by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. Georges Adéagbo contributed "Venise d'hier Venise d'aujourd'hui" 1999, which brought him an award of the jury of 48th biennale. with the support of @mennour gallery. the exhibition with 35 artists and various conferences continues until july10th. check schedule on. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/venice-resonance/schedule/

We brought The South to Venice! Join us Sunday May 10th — Root & Return Grace Aneiza Ali moderates a conversation between Adama Delphine Fawundu, whose film A Meditation for the Dispersed weaves Atlantic, Mediterranean and Mano River waters as sites of ancestral memory and repair, and LeXander Bryant, whose cyanotypes Dirt Road Baby roots diasporic inheritance in Southern soil: the dirt road as archive, as body, as homecoming. Dorsoduro 2525/ Fondamenta Rossa, 30123 Venezia (VE), ITALY #Resonance #DirtRoadBaby #labiennaledivenezia

Red Arrow is pleased to share exciting news about artists whose works have been featured in recent exhibitions at the gallery. LeXander Bryant, Vadis Turner and Alex Blau will be included in “Resonance”presented by the Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice, taking place during the Venice Biennale 2026. Resonance brings Vanderbilt and Nashville’s creative community into conversation with global artists, curators, poets, performers, and scholars — creating a shared space for listening, collaboration, and new forms of artistic exchange. Resonance is an exhibition, public program series, and season of sonic sessions. Artistic Directors: María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Kamaal Malak. Curators: Grace Aneiza Ali and Selene Wendt. Congratulations to all involved! 💙 #lexanderbryant #vadisturner #alexblau #vanderbilt #eadj

Looking at the work of Carlos Garaicoa, and the architectural exhibition Prefabricating Solidarity at Vanderbilt University’s Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice (@eadj.program ), Alexandra Martinez (@alex___mar ) traces the lived history of postcolonial Cuban architecture. “Garaicoa has spent three decades exploring Havana’s built environment as a political archive—mapping ruins, unfinished buildings, and stalled utopian projects. His practice makes clear that architecture is never neutral. Buildings are records of ambition and survival.” Read more from Martinez’s feature at the link in bio. — 1. Installation view of “Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS-Žeželj Between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola” exhibition at Begonia Labs project gallery, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Photograph by Vesna Pavlović and image courtesy of Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice, Nashville. 2. “Is the Human Body Equal to the Social Body?” (2002), from Carlos Garaicoa’s series “Continuity of Somebody’s Architecture” shown at Documenta XI. Image Courtesy of Estudio Carlos Garaicoa & Galleria Continua, Havana. 3. Carlos Garaicoa, “Untitled (Hospital Infantil)” (2016), pins and threads on lambda photograph mounted and laminated in black Gator Board, 125 x 158 cm (2). Image courtesy of Estudio Carlos Garaicoa & Galleria Continua, Havana.

On April 8, join us for a panel of local leaders who are also part of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community. RSVP at the link in bio! Where: MLK, Jr. Magnet High School 613 17th Ave. North Nashville, TN 37203 When: April 8, 2026 5:30-8:00 PM

Many congratulations to Tamara Reynolds for opening her new exhibtion “Melungeon” at Begonia Labs with @eadj.program ! The show is on view through the end of this Spring 2026 semester. Visit the Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice website for more information!

Opening Reception for Melungeon | Tamara Reynolds Curated by Grace Aneiza Ali | Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice Vanderbilt

#Repost @eadj.program with @use.repost ・・・ The Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice and Founder Dr. María Magdalena Campos-Pons (@maria_magdalena_campos_pons ) invites you to join us for the opening reception of our Spring 2026 exhibition, “Melungeon” at Begonia Labs. Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 6–8 p.m. Exhibition On view: March 23–June 26, 2026 The EADJ Team will hold visitor hours at Begonia Labs on Thursdays and Fridays from 4-7pm, on Saturdays from 1-4pm, or by appointment. Begonia Labs | 2805 West End Avenue Nashville, TN 37203 Melungeon features photographs by Tamara Reynolds (@tamarareynoldsphotography ) exploring Sneedville, Tennessee, and the Melungeon community, a historically marginalized mixed-race Appalachian people. Through portraits, domestic spaces, and landscapes, the exhibition reveals everyday life shaped by land, family, and endurance while challenging simplified narratives of Appalachia and American identity. This exhibition is curated by Grace Aneiza Ali (@grace_aneiza_ali ), EADJ’s appointed curator for 2024-2026. This exhibition is part of Somewhere We Are Human, the Spring 2026 Public Programs series of the Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice at Vanderbilt University. Support is provided by the Ford Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. ***See the link in @eadj.program bio for details about the exhibition.

A Curator's Annotations featured in Burnaway @burnaway traces the pivots and questions that have shaped my recent exhibitions—from a missing question mark in a title, to showing a painting from the back for the first time, to centering an artist's family as the first archive.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ My gratitude to Courtney McClellan (@courtneylmcclellan ) for creating Burnaway's brilliant Annotations column—a space that invites artists, writers, curators, and scholars to reveal their process and show the margins. And to Isabella Marie Garcia (@isamxrie ) for shaping this so beautifully. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Read the full essay at /magazine/a-curators-annotations/

In the latest review for ARTMargins Online, ”In Defense of Internationalism in an Era of Isolationism,“ author Nicoletta Rousseva explores the exhibition ”Concrete Utopia: Between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola.“ The article examines how Yugoslavia’s IMS-Žeželj construction system became a ”triangle of solidarity,“fostering unique political and architectural exchanges across the Non-Aligned Movement. By revisiting these historical networks of cooperation, Rousseva highlights how the exhibition challenges today’s climate of rising ethnonationalism and offers a powerful vision for global interconnectedness. This full review is now live on ARTMargins Online—head to the link in our bio to read the full piece! 🌐🏗️ Images: Prefabricating Solidarity: IMS-Žežlj Between Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Angola, Museum of African Art, Belgrade, June 2025, exhibition view. Photograph by Nicoletta Rousseva. #Angola #architecture #nonaligned #Yugoslavia

Waiting for a New Year to ring has long been a tradition of mine 🎆 Sending of 2025 with a few moments that made me happy. Here’s to a more peaceful, healthy, happy, and creative 2026! 🌟📸✨ ✨ Emotivne Mape exhibition @ugklarairosa in Subotica and a fast train ride with Jelena Vesić and Ana Sladojević ✨ It has been a year of Prefabricating Solidarity @museumofafricanartbelgrade and @eadj.program Begonia Labs in Nashville ✨ Shape of Time exhibition I curated at the Knoxville @artsandculturealliance Emporium featuring Kyle Cottier, Amanda Leigh Evans, Jessica Ingram, Haein Kang, and Christina Renfer Vogel ✨ Birthday @cincytennis #tennisproletarian Play more tennis in the New Year 💚 ✨Alexandria and Luke Leinweber wedding in Seattle 🩷 ✨@wovenwind at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture in Natchez MS, and ETSU College of Arts & Sciences Slocumb Galleries where Luke and his friends helped install. ✨ The Swim Pool Party for the Air We Breathe Is Not Invisible at the Sewanee University of the South. Waiting for the second season of bluebells this May🪻 ✨ Standing next to Ed Ruscha at the Personal Stories/Political Realities, dialogue between the museums of contemporary art in Lyon and Belgrade exhibition @msub_mocab ✨ Hotel Moskva at the Uncanny exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts @womeninthearts ✨ Žene U Crnom Srbija Women in Black photographs at the Heldinnen/Sheroes exhibition at the Frauenmuseum, Bonn, Germany ✨The Endowed Professor @vanderbiltu honor of my academic life 🩵 ✨ Where’d All time Go? @vanderbilt.art Senior art majors show. Miss this group! ✨ Winter Diary with Srdjan Valjarević published by Laguna Belgrade after 30 years from its original first edition. This time we did it right. ✨ Ne-Bitef Festival in Belgrade @czkd_bg In hard times we can gather together ⭐️