Intersections of Gender and Place
October 1 – October 31
Reception: October 24, 5:00 – 6:30pm
Every other year, The W Galleries invites a small number of artists to participate in the Intersections of Gender and Place exhibition. The parameters for the exhibition are open to the artists’ interpretations. Our only stipulations are that the works somehow engages with gender in the American South. The results generate lively discussions about gender and place. This year, our invited artists are Nia Alexander Campbell, Allison Grant, and Sarah Odens.
Nia Alexander Campbell is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher from Virginia. Her work explores storytelling as a tool for cultural memory, connection, and liberation. She uses mixed media collage, speculative worldbuilding, and the design of interactive narrative objects—such as dolls, board games, card decks, and activity books—to explore themes of joy, play, identity, and Black feminist thought.
Campbell’s practice emphasizes inclusive, community-rooted approaches that center the experiences and imaginations of marginalized groups—particularly Black women. Across her creative and research work, she treats play as both a site of resistance and a meaningful entry point for exploring complex narratives and possibilities.
Campbell holds a BFA in Painting & Printmaking (with a minor in Art History), an MFA in Design from VCUarts Qatar, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Media & Design Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Allison Grant is an artist, writer, curator, and Associate Professor of Photography at The University of Alabama. Her artworks have been widely exhibited and are held in collections at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, DePaul Art Museum, Columbia College Chicago, King County Portable Works Collection and several private and corporate collections. Grant was named on the Silver Eye Center for Photography’s 2022 Silver List. She received the 2020 Portfolio Purchase Award from the Atlanta Photography Group, the 2019 Developed Work Fellowship from the Midwest Center for Photography and was shortlisted for the 2019 FotoFilmic Mesh Prize.
Editorial photographs by Grant have been published in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. She is based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and available for travel.
Sarah Odens is an artist, curator, and Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Exhibitions & Lectures at Auburn University, Alabama. She received her MFA with a concentration in painting from Michigan State University (2015), and her BA in Art and English from the University of Sioux Falls in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (2012). After completing her MFA, she returned to Sioux Falls for a position as Assistant Curator of the Washington Pavilion Visual Arts Center, where she supervised docents and educational programming, and was involved in mounting more than 45 exhibitions. In 2017, Odens was appointed Curator of the Visual Arts Center; she curated more than 25 exhibitions.
She joined the faculty of Auburn University in 2019, where she has curated more than 25 exhibitions by professional artists, and many student exhibitions. Odens has exhibited her work throughout the Midwest and South at venues including the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, Michigan), Spring Hill College (Mobile, Alabama), and 311 Gallery (Raleigh, North Carolina). In December 2023, Odens was one of four featured artists in the exhibition Wish List at SeeSaw Art (Manchester, New Hampshire).