art.wikisort.org - Artist

Marilyn Nance (born November 12, 1953), also known as Soulsista, is an African-American photojournalist and multimedia artist known for work focusing on exploring human connections, spirituality, and the use of technology in storytelling.[2][3]

Marilyn Nance
Born	(1953-11-12) November 12, 1953 (age 69) New York City
Nationality	American
Other names	Soulsista[1]
Known for	Photography Digital Art Photojournalism Mixed-media Archiving Licensing Copyright
Website	www.marilynnance.com

Nance's work has been published in Life, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Essence, and Newsday.[3] Her work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her book is the photographic archive of the FESTAC '77 Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, Last Day in Lagos (2021).

Early life and education

Nance was born in New York City on November 12, 1953, and grew up in Brooklyn.[2][3] Her mother was a factory worker and her father an elevator operator in a local post office.[1] (One of her grandmothers was from Birmingham, Alabama.[4]) Nance attended New York University from 1971 to 1972, studying journalism, before earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in communications and graphic design from Pratt Institute in 1976. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1996 and graduated from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in 1998.[3]

Career

Nance began photographing as a child. While still a student at Pratt, she shot members of her family member in their quotidian activities at her mother's home in Pratt City, a Black suburb of Birmingham.[3] She declared herself a photographer after having worked in the photo studio of Pratt Institute's Office of Public Relations under the direction of Alan Newman while also still a student. After the studio closed in 1974, she was able to freelance for The Village Voice the next year.[3] Nance's body of work focused on African American spiritual culture: She made images of members of groups such as the Black Indians of New Orleans, Oyotunji African Village in Sheldon, South Carolina, churches in Brooklyn and also the first Black church in America.[5]

In 1977, Nance served as the official photographer for the North American Zone of FESTAC 77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, a Pan-African international festival held in Lagos, Nigeria.[6] The festival took place from January 15 to February 12, 1977, and was centered around the themes, "Revival, resurgence, propagation, and protection of black and African cultural values and civilization."[7] Over the course of the month-long event, her first trip outside of the U.S.,[6] Nance amassed 1,500 images on her Miranda Sensomat,[4] representing the most complete photographic record of this major event.[8]

Nance served as an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in New York City from 1993 to 1994.[2] In the latter year, she presented an installation at the museum, Egungun Work evoked by a Yoruba festival she attended while photographing the Oyotunji African Village in Sheldon in 1981. The art installation contained banners, church fans and pews, and presented Nance's contact sheets and magnifying glasses, by which viewers could edit the work.[6]

In 1995, Nance became a digital pioneer, developing her soulsista.com website, and in 1996 served as one of the first internet DJs.^{[citation needed]}

In 1997, she developed a web app prototyping Ifá (Yoruba) divination, and in 1999 she curated a digital project for the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, putting online more than 500 images of nineteenth-century African Americans.[3] Nance went on to become a technology specialist in the New York City public school system, helping teachers and their students use technology as a tool for lifelong learning.

Nance gave a lecture on her work to the Library of Congress in 2004.[5]

In 2021, her archive of the FESTAC '77, Last Day in Lagos, was published by CARA/Fourthwall Books. It was edited by a curator of photography at Museum of Modern Art, Oluremi C. Onabanjo,[4] and its foreword written by Julie Mehretu.[9] The book has been hailed as a significant cultural document by The New York Times and The New Yorker[4][10] and was also reviewed in BOMB magazine.[11]

Publications

• Rosenblum, Naomi, A World History of Photography (New York: Abbeville, 1997, 1989, 2007, 2019)[5]
• Rosenblum, Naomi, A History of Women Photographers, (New York: Abbeville, 1994, 2001, 2010)[5]

Exhibitions

• Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1991[12]
• Smithsonian, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, April–September 2012, online[13]

Awards

• 1987: New York State Council on the Arts Grant[5]
• 1989: New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship for photography[5]
• 1991: Finalist, W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography, for her body of work on African American spirituality[3][5]
• 1993: New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship for non-fiction literature[5]
• 1993: Finalist, W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography, for her body of work on African American spirituality[3][5]
• 2000: New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship for photography[5]

Collections

• Smithsonian Institution's Smithsonian American Art Museum[14]
• The Library of Congress's Prints & Photographs Division holds some of her work from the 1970s and 1980s.[3][15][5]
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture's Preservation of the Black Religious Heritage[2][16]
• Museum of Fine Arts Houston[17]

References

External links

• Official website
• Interview with Nance and Fanny Robles

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