Since 1997, the prestigious Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards and accompanying exhibitions have celebrated the outstanding achievements of local contemporary artists. For the first time, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has the honor of hosting the exhibitions of the three Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards winners for 2024: Juan Diego Gaucin, Aleah Washington, and Kevin Demery.

Juan Diego Gaucin teaches painting at Johnson County Community College and Haskell Indian Nations University. A self-described figurative painter with expressionist tendencies, he emigrated from Mexico as a child. That experience compels him to explore the plight of migrants in the five large-scale paintings that comprise his exhibition Para una vida mejor/For a Better Life. “Ask any immigrant why they choose to risk their lives and freedoms attempting to come into the United States or any other prosperous nation, and you will likely hear the phrase, ‘for a better life for my family,’” Gaucin asserts. “What better motivation is there than safeguarding the well-being and prosperity of future generations? Will we, as a society, choose to condemn the next great historical figure to languish in a detention cell, work a field, or fall victim to the many hardships plaguing our less fortunate neighbors? Or will we open our hearts and minds and resolve to invest in a brighter future for all?”

Recent Kansas City Art Institute graduate Aleah Washington’s exhibition Slowly Drifting includes a selection of vibrant quilts and colored pencil drawings. Washington’s quilts piece together stories of oppressive systems such as redlining and explore complex issues like displacement, urban decay, and our relationship to natural resources. “The fabrics I source correlate to different cultures and histories, but when combined they create unity and demonstrate a new strength. Thoughts of time and division are explored through contrasting outcomes. Disregarded fabrics gain value by being reshaped and then brought back together,” she writes. The interest in maps and mapping that informs Washington’s quilts likewise shapes her drawings. Maps merge with memories of driving in her home state of Texas, “exploring maps is like looking ahead of your journey at the possibilities while remaining in the present.”

Kevin Demery is an interdisciplinary artist originally from the San Francisco Bay area who has exhibited internationally and holds a tenure-track position at Kansas City Art Institute. Demery looks for poetry in objects in order to interrogate Black historical narratives and examine the sociopolitical context in which he finds himself as a Black man. In his exhibition, A Lesson Before Dying, Demery takes on themes he describes as having “permeated African American communities from emancipation to present day.” “Sculpture is the vehicle I use to engage the audience with iconic elements such as children’s puzzles, windchimes, and plaster-cast hands,” he notes. “Many of the works reference specific histories and poetically interpret them within larger cultural experiences. . . . I’m drawn to the use of unconventional materials to reveal the subtle nuances of the histories I awaken. In this, I find links between the objects I create and my experience growing up as an African American youth amid atmospheres riddled with political inertia, poverty, and violence.”

A jury of contemporary art professionals selects the Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards recipients each year. Nelson-Atkins Sanders Sosland Senior Curator of Global Modern and Contemporary Art Stephanie Fox Knappe joined Hyperallergic Senior Editor Hakim Bishara, Walker Art Center Assistant Curator of Visual Arts Taylor Jasper, and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Curator Marina Elena Ortiz to choose the 2024 awardees from more than 100 applicants.

Organized by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in collaboration with Charlotte Street. Generous support provided by Paul DeBruce and Linda Woodsmall-DeBruce, Muriel McBrien Kauffman Family Foundation, Sara and Bill Morgan, Nancy and Rick Green, Stephen and Mary Anne McDowell, Hallmark Cards, Inc., Husch Blackwell, and The Alan and Judy Kosloff Fund.

Location: Gallery L8 - Project Space

General Admission: Free