Atlanta Art Fair: Group Presentation
For this year’s edition of the Atlanta Art Fair, Jonathan Carver Moore is honored to present works by Mary W.D. Graham, Adrian Burrell, Adana Tillman, and Carrie Ann Plank—four artists whose practices uniquely challenge, expand, and reimagine how we see and experience the world.
Each artist approaches their medium with an insistence on complexity, creating work that invites both reflection and dialogue. Mary W.D. Graham presents Value Test: Brown Paper Bag, a body of work that examines colorism and the historical weight of the “paper bag test.” Through abstraction, layering, and her signature material experimentation, Graham reframes this painful cultural marker as a site of inquiry. The work interrogates systems of inclusion and exclusion while also asserting the complexity and richness of Black identity. In transforming a symbol of judgment into painterly exploration, Graham opens space for dialogue about how value—both aesthetic and human—is assigned, measured, and challenged.
Adana Tillman’s practice draws from the tactile traditions of quilt-making and textile assemblage, mediums historically tied to preservation, storytelling, and community care. Her works stitch together figurative forms, vibrant color, and layered fabric, creating compositions that embody both individuality and collective identity. By transforming familiar materials into deeply personal yet universal narratives, Tillman brings forward histories of resilience while also carving space for joy, intimacy, and futurity.
Adrian Burrell uses photography as a vehicle for narrative, memory, and cultural witnessing. His images balance the documentary with the poetic, often centering the lives of Black families and communities. Burrell’s lens captures the weight of history alongside the tenderness of everyday ritual—moments of vulnerability, defiance, and care that push against reductive representations. His work insists on seeing Black life in its fullness: complex, layered, and alive with both struggle and celebration.
Carrie Ann Plank debuts her new body of work, Protean Construct, created during her residency at the Space Program San Francisco. This series translates the structural language of protein folding—drawn from vaccine research and disease study—into sweeping, abstract compositions. Through layered color, shifting density, and rhythmic form, Plank reimagines scientific models as immersive visual systems that are both precise and poetic. At a time when public trust in science has been tested, Protean Construct underscores art’s power to render complex knowledge tangible and to invite reflection on the biological and cultural systems that shape our shared world.
Together, these artists’ works form a dialogue across disciplines—painting, photography, textiles, and printmaking—that reflects my curatorial vision: to champion artists who embody rigor, vulnerability, and innovation while centering perspectives that are often overlooked in broader art world narratives.
Bringing these artists into conversation in Atlanta feels particularly significant. This city’s history and present are steeped in resilience, creativity, and transformation—values mirrored in the practices of the artists gathered here. Jonathan Carver Moore hopes that visitors encounter not only the beauty of their work but also the questions, urgencies, and possibilities that these artists invite us to sit with.
