Woman's face superimposed by the leaves and branches of a tree.

“That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been, or that which we hope to be. Thus, our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.” 

—Ralph Ellison, The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison

THE WORK

ABOUT The Artist

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  • In both my photographic works and works on paper, I create narratives at the intersection of personal recollection and collective memory. As a visual storyteller, I explore the physical environments, familial bonds, and cultural tropes that shape identity.

    Memory and remembrance are foundational to my practice; they allow me to navigate questions of belonging and isolation. In a world where I sometimes feel untethered, photography grounds me. The camera helps me measure and mark my place in the world and offers a way to look inward by looking out.

    I'm not a documentarian, but I am interested in revealing the intricacies and unreliability of memory. Ghostly self-portraits, photographic sketches of family members collaged from family archives, and drawings that illustrate the political power of a black woman’s hair root the work in lived experience. They challenge racialized narratives that center suffering and oppression, and make visual objects out of the memories of people, places, and events that have influenced how I define myself.

    My abstract works on paper extend this inquiry, moving away from the photographic record altogether to consider the sensory elements of identity that are more about emotion than facts.  Vibrant color and fluid, abstract forms reflect the amorphous, immaterial nature of memory and its impact on the stories we weave together about our past, present, and future selves.

  • Felicia Megginson holds an M.A. in Studio Art from New York University with a concentration in lens-based media. She has exhibited extensively, and has participated in numerous residencies and fellowships including: the Bronx Museum of Art Artist in the Marketplace program, the Center for Photography in Woodstock AIR, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Henry Street Settlement. She was the recipient of En Foco’s “New Works in Photography” award and a Polaroid film grant. Significant exhibitions include Nine Moments for Now (2018) and Harlem Found Ways (2017) at the Alaine Locke Gallery of African and African American Art at Harvard. In 2017, Megginson was one of a group of artists invited by Occupy Museums to exhibit work as part of Debtfair, their submission to the Whitney Biennial that year.

    Megginson’s work has been published in here is new york: a democracy of photographs, Reflections in Black : A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present, Bomb, Issue 109, Studio magazine, and Transition: The Magazine of Africa and the Diaspora.