Throughout her practice, Allison Janae Hamilton (b. 1984; Lexington, KY) draws on her upbringing in the rural American South, weaving themes of environmental justice, folklore, mythology, and the contemporary legacies of colonization and enslavement into sculpture, photography, and video work. Layering plant matter, landscape and figurative imagery, complex sounds, and animal remains throughout her work, Hamilton creates immersive spaces that consider notions of “Americana” and our relationships to land in the face of a changing climate, particularly in the rural American south.
Born in Kentucky and raised in Florida, Hamilton also spent time at her maternal family’s farm and homestead in the rural flatlands of western Tennessee. Her relationship with these places forms the cornerstone of her practice—particularly her interest in landscape. In Hamilton’s treatment of land, the natural environment is the central protagonist, rather than a backdrop, in the unfolding of historic and contemporary narratives. Blending land-centered folklore and personal family narratives, she engages haunting—yet epic—mythologies that address the social and political concerns of today’s changing southern terrain, including land loss, environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability. Each work contains narratives that are pieced together from folktales, hunting and farming rituals, African-American nature writing, and Baptist hymns. Drawing from all of these references, she envisions what an epic myth looks and feels like in rural terrain.
Hamilton has exhibited widely across the United States and abroad. Her work has been the subject of institutional solo exhibitions at the Georgia Museum of Art, the Joslyn Art Museum, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), and Atlanta Contemporary, as well as a commissioned solo project with Creative Time. Her sculpture, Love is like the sea… (2023) is currently on view in the Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition, presented by The Helis Foundation in New Orleans, LA. Select recent group exhibitions include there is this We, Sculpture Milwaukee; The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (traveling); Shifting Horizons, Nevada Museum of Art; Enunciated Life, California African Art Museum; More, More, More, TANK Shanghai; and Indicators: Artists on Climate Change, Storm King Art Center. Work by the artist is held in public collections such as the Hood Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, Nasher Museum of Art, Nevada Museum of Art, and Speed Museum of Art, among others. Hamilton has participated in a range of fellowships and residencies, including at the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York, NY; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and Fundación Botín, Santander, Spain. She is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant. Hamilton holds a PhD in American Studies from New York University and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She lives and works in New York.