On view July 26 – September 27, 2025
Opening reception: Saturday, July 26 from 3 – 5pm; remarks at 3:45pm
Catharine Clark Gallery is pleased to announce its Summer 2025 program, featuring three dynamic solo exhibitions: Joel Daniel Phillips’s A Compelling Narrative (South Gallery), Gil Batle’s Almost Sanctuary (North Gallery), and Nanci Amaka’s Cleanse / Window (Media Room). These exhibitions, presented in conversation with one another, reflect on artmaking as a form of record-keeping and a means of revealing unseen histories.
Joel Daniel Phillips's exhibition, A Compelling Narrative, continues his research into the Library of Congress’s photographic archives from the 1930s, created during the New Deal by the Farm Security Administration (FSA). His acclaimed series, “Killing the Negative,” responds to the lesser-known process by which FSA photographs were selected for publication. Through a deep dive into the archive, Phillips discovered who made these choices and what happened to the negatives of photographs deemed unworthy of publication.
Phillips notes, “The American government’s social safety net—much of which is being dismantled today—was largely built around the New Deal, which the original FSA photographs were all created to sell to the American people. In this moment, I've found myself seeing the hole-punch become both a metaphor for the way political administrations are carving holes through the heart of America, as well as a potent symbol questioning how we create and tell our stories.”.