In Conversation: Lonnie Holley and Tau Lewis with Martin Clark

Lonnie Holley (b. Birmingham, AL, 1950) lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2024, Holley's work was the subject of a solo show at Camden Art Centre, London, UK. His work has recently been exhibited at the International African American Museum, Charleston, USA (2024); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2024); Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, USA (2023); the Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2023); Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, USA (2022); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C, USA (2022); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, USA (2021); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2020); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2020); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2018); MASS MoCA, North Adams, USA (2017); de Young Museum, San Francisco, USA (2017); among many others. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the International African American Museum, Charleston, SC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Holley's first film, I Snuck Off the Slave Ship, (2019), premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2019. In 2023, he received lifetime achievement awards from the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY, USA, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Maine, ME, USA. Holley is signed to Jagjaguwar, and lives and works in Atlanta, GA, USA.

Tau Lewis creates theatrical installations by hand-sewing, carving, and assembling found materials and objects; each sculpture is conceived as a character in part of the artist’s ongoing world-building project, taking narrative inspiration from myth, literature, poetry, music, and spirituality. Lewis begins the process of creating work by collecting used fabrics and materials from her surroundings and housing them in her studio—such as worn clothes and fabrics, leather, photographs, and elemental forms including driftwood and shells—absorbing their animistic qualities and memories to develop a relationship with them over time, before she utilizes them in her work. She transforms these simple materials into elaborate soft sculptures, masks, and other assemblages, hand-sewing, carving, and using other analogue forms of making.  Her work is situated in a long lineage of Black cultural production, including artistic mentors and peers such as the Gee’s Bend Quilting Collective, Lonnie Holley, and Simone Leigh.