belonging to place: The Creative Community & Artistic Legacy of bell hooks

In Belonging: A Culture of Place (1990), Black feminist writer, activist, and cultural critic bell hooks writes, “…it was my flight from Kentucky, my traveling all the way to the west coast, to California, that revealed to me the extent to which my sense and sensibility was deeply informed by the geography of place.”

bell hooks’s own sense of belonging to place, to Appalachia, and her commitment to nourishing the imagination of folks in rural areas is evident at the bell hooks Institute at Berea College in Berea, KY, where her archive is also housed. Installed at the Institute is hooks’s private collection of artworks created by well-known contemporary Black artists as well as those created by herself, her family members, and artists in her community. In addition to creating access to this art, she wanted anyone interested in looking through her life’s work to come to Kentucky, to hear her people speak, and to see the hills she came from, proclaiming, “everything that I am was made in the ground of Kentucky.” (Madison County Public Library, “See the Art, Meet the Artisan: bell hooks” 2015). With this exhibition and forthcoming book publication, we hope to expand upon the creative community that hooks engaged and supported throughout her life.

Entering the bell hooks Institute is akin to entering a sanctuary—one where you can still hear music wafting from a small CD player tucked in the corner of the dining room underneath a signed letterpress print of Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival”; where a cluster of candles nestled in the fireplace feel as though they could have been lit just this morning to enjoy the company of the artworks they illuminate. You can feel the energy of bell’s spirit lingering in the air and the almost-animate rocking chairs at the front of the room where she held intimate conversations with her friends and notable thinkers like Imani Perry, Laverne Cox, Cornel West, and Gloria Steinem. Turning a corner in this space is to enter a portal of limitless possibility.

For many of the artists featured in this exhibition, their time in Appalachia continues to shape, ground, and show up in their work. For others, their connection to the region lies squarely with bell. The work here documents the complicated process of coming to see and belong to a place often exploited and marginalized. Together, the artists elevate and contribute to familial and collective histories that find sanctuary in conversation with land, our own imaginative processes, and the interwoven communities we are a part of. Their work reaches across time, space, and geography to pollinate one another, and us, as they build upon the legacy of the artists represented at the bell hooks Institute.

– E. Gale Greenlee and shauna caldwell, Guest Curators

About the Curators

E. Gale Greenlee (she/her) is a Black feminist legacy keeper, a writer-educator, and independent children’s literature and Black Girlhood Studies scholar. Born in Greensboro, NC, her maternal roots lie in rural South Carolina and her paternal roots go six generations deep in the Swannanoa Valley of Western North Carolina. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Master of Arts in Africana Women’s Studies from Clark Atlanta University, and a doctorate in African American literature from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research sits at the intersection of Black and Latinx girlhood studies, critical geography, and children’s and young adult literature. She is the author of “A Blueprint for Black Girlhood: bell hooks’s Homemade Love” and “The Archive that bell built.” E. Gale Greenlee co-curated the installation in the bell hooks center and co-organized the Inaugural bell hooks Symposium, held in 2023 at Berea College.

shauna caldwell (she/her) is a white, Appalachian artist, educator, curator, and scholar rooted in her hometown of Boone, North Carolina. She uses multimedia and photographic processes to honor land, familial connections, sacred relationships, and transformation. Through her practice, she explores collaborative opportunities for the expansion of Appalachian placemaking and liberatory feminist belonging through the arts and loving community. caldwell received BFAs in both Studio art and Art education, and an MA in Appalachian studies and Non-profit administration at Appalachian State University. She has exhibited her work locally, nationally, and internationally.