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 and on-paper works, I create narratives at the intersection of personal recollection and collective memory. As a visual storyteller, I explore how cultural, familial, and societal pressures shape identity.

    Memory and remembrance are foundational to my practice, they allow me to navigate questions of identity, belonging, and loss. 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.

    My layered photographs are made in-camera or collaged from family archives, and they root the work in lived experience. Painting and drawing let me embrace the more fluid, fragmented nature of memory.

    By combining representational imagery with expressive forms, I highlight the tension between remembrance and identity. These visual strategies mirror the elusive quality of memory and mark the space where clarity and ambiguity meet.

  • 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.