October 4-26, 2024
Opening reception on Friday, October 4, 2024; 5:30p-8P
Artist talk TBD
All artworks are for sale in person or online. See the online gallery to purchase through the Bells Gallery website.
Where She Got That From? is a collection of works by the mixed media artist Jasmine Best on view at Bells Gallery on October 4-26, 2024.
Jasmine Best finds connections between black storytelling, folklore and modern black culture by examining how Black culture is documented, treated, and absorbed into the larger American culture both past and present. Best investigates personal experiences and historically black approaches to storytelling for the complexities of how Black people have wrestled with how blackness becomes Americana. Best is critical of narratives around misogynoir and race/gender-based social capital in media.
Best reinterprets folk histories from a personal Black Feminist perspective to participate in a larger storytelling/audience canon. Best explores the gendered implications of the stories themselves, but also the gendered influence of the storyteller, the audience, and the archivist of these folk stories and histories.
Best’s use of fibers recontextualizes the women who came before her who used such materials to curate in the only places they had full control; their homes. Medium specificity materializes the emotions tied to memories and speaks to the material culture of the Southern United States. Best utilizes these materials as means of turning the everyday into the supernatural and as forms of Black resistance.
As one who descended from those who chose to stay in the South, Best seeks to isolate and identify the Southern with-a-capital “S” aspects of their work. Whether it is through personal, intergenerational, or folk heritage, Best is a storyteller.
Jasmine Best is a true Southern Artist, gathering narratives from her Carolinian family and childhood. The North Carolina-based artist uses her memories and manipulations of her memories to create dialogues about the black female identity in the South and in predominantly white spaces.
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of North Carolina at
Greensboro. Best recently is one of the 2024 Artist in Residence of the James Castle House Museum.
She works with tangible and traditional mediums combined with digital means of art making. Her work often depicts maternal figures, each depicting the diversity and qualities that make up the black southern women in her life through several generations.
Education
2025, MFA Studio Art University of Georgia
2016, BFA in New Media and Design from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Exhibitions and Publications
Buried the Roots for Now, Greenville, SC 2024 (Solo)
Where She Got that From?, Bells Gallery, Dothan, AL 2024 (Solo)
B24: Wiregrass Biennial, Wiregrass Museum, Dothan, AL 2024
String Theory, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte, NC 2024
Screened In: Deconstructed, Antenna, New Orleans, LA 2024 (Solo)
2023 Tell Me a Story, North Gallery, Lyndon House, Athens, GA 2023 (Solo)
Southern Tales Retold, Rowe Gallery, University of North Carolina Charlotte, Charlotte NC (Solo) Oh Mother, Hera Gallery, Wakefield, RI
G.R.I.T.S. girls raised in the south, Bells Gallery, Dothan, AL 2023
Into Me I See, Echo Contemporary, Atlanta GA 2022
Nyctophobia: The Fear of Darkness, FC Collective, Atlanta GA 2022
Carroll Harris Simms National Black Art Competition and Exhibition, African American Museum, Dallas TX 2022
New American Paintings South Issue #160 (publication)
Not in Repose, Goodyear Arts, Charlotte NC 2022
Video Screening, Acid Rain/Attic 506, Chapel Hill NC 2022
Aperture Picture Card, Aperture Cinema, Winston Salem NC 2022
Diasporic Threads, Commonthreads Press, 2022 (publication)
Black@Intersection SECCA, Winston Salem, 2021
The Balm: Art for Black Women’s Wellness, Southside Community Art Center, Chicago, IL 2021 A Beautiful Proxy, Lump Gallery, Raleigh NC 2021 (Solo)
NC Freedom Papers, Blueprint, 2021 (publication)
A Collection of Change, Block Gallery, Raleigh NC 2021
Girlhood Summer, Durham Art Guild Golden Belt Gallery, Durham NC 2021 (Solo) Inward, Stay Home Gallery, Paris TN, 2021
Make/Shift: It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like This, Vox Populi Philadelphia, PA 2021 (publication)
FACTitious, Morlan Gallery, Lexington, KY 2020
American Weeds Growing Through Docile Garden, University of NC at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 2020 (Solo)
Southern Art Movement, Downtown Graham, NC 2020
when they see US, Guilford College Founders Gallery, Greensboro, NC 2020
Jewels, Gatewood Gallery, Greensboro, NC 201
Dirty South, Art Space, Raleigh, NC 2019
Screened In, Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC 2019 (Solo)
We Art GSO, Center of Visual Arts, Greensboro, NC 2018
North Carolina Artist Exhibition, Duke Energy Center, Raleigh, NC 2018
Reciprocal Magazine 2018 (Online Publication)
Grants, Awards, and Fellowships
Lyndon House Art Center Choice Award and Lyndon House Arts Foundation Award for Excellence 2023
The Circ Artist Grant, Circ Artist, 2022
Artist Project Fund, National Black Artist Fund, 2022
Art Business Accelerator Grant, Artwork Archive, 2021
Regional Artist Project Grant, North Carolina Arts Council, Greensboro, NC 2020
Residencies
Pentaculum winter residency at Arrowmount, Gatlinburg TN 2025
BCSC Broomcreaft, Berea College, Berea KY 2024
James Castle House Museum, Boise,ID 2024
Olive’s Porch, Murphy, NC 2023
Grow Residency, Greensboro NC 2022
Stay At Home Residency, Stay at Home Gallery, Paris, TN 2022
Elsewhere Residency, Greensboro, NC 2021
Dear Artists, Artist with Anxiety Residency, Online 2021
Teaching/Workshops
Memory Quilts, Sawtooth School Youth Art Program, Winston Salem, NC 2021
TAG Presentation, North Carolina Art Museum, Raleigh, NC 2021
Techniques for Creating Images with Fabric Demo/Workshop, North Carolina Art Museum, Raleigh, NC 2021