6 Atlanta-based Artists Who Explore Place, Belonging, and Heritage

'Of Origins and Belonging, Drawn from Atlanta' is the third in a series of exhibitions at the High focused on work by Atlanta-based artists. The exhibition features six artists who address issues related to place, belonging, and heritage in their work: Jessica Caldas, Yehimi Cambrón, Xie Caomin, Wihro Kim, Dianna Settles and Cosmo Whyte. Compelled by the national debate and dialogue around immigration reform, this iteration of the High’s Atlanta drawings project features artists whose distinct voices, diverse perspectives, and personal experiences represent worldviews informed and enriched by their cultural heritage and the bond they share as members of a diverse creative community in Atlanta. Among the participating artists, Caomin and Whyte immigrated to the United States as adults, and Cambrón is a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient.

Wihro Kim combines representational painting and abstraction to establish incidents of spatial disharmony and coalescence. Kim maps out transitions between interior and exterior spaces through the use of line work and patches of pigment, establishing a framework for the distribution of color and light and the modulation of form to describe unnamable but oddly familiar things. This fracturing of pictorial space characterizes a work’s structure but also functions similarly to perspective, foreshadowing, and dialogue. Kim’s description of the world, at once concurrent and disjointed, corresponds to emotional, social, and psychological frameworks through which people navigate the world.

Xie Caomin grew up in China but has been living and working in the United States since 1999. Caomin works in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, and digital media. Growing up under the strict Chinese Communist regime, Caomin was among the first generation of artists to touch upon contemporary topics and themes in his work. He frequently depicts Western and non-Western motifs to create multidimensional art. Caomin states that, “For me, art practice is to constantly enter the worlds of the others to see myself.” He teaches studio art at Clayton State University.

Dianna Settles is a Vietnamese American artist, musician, and gallerist whose work focuses on everyday, commonplace settings to counter fetishized and passive images of women of color. Settles grew up in rural North Georgia and began making art with a realistic aesthetic. A trip to her father’s homeland of Vietnam helped Settles realize that she wanted to portray people who resemble her. She then developed the brightly colored Asian figures common in her work today. Settles operates Hi-Lo Gallery in midtown, Atlanta.

Cosmo Whyte is both a multidisciplinary artist and educator. His art reflects on the legacy of colonialism and migration. This topic means a lot to Whyte, who moved from Jamaica to the United States in 2001, at age nineteen, to attend Bennington College and pursue a BFA in painting. Whyte uses his personal experiences to question constructs of masculinity, ethnicity, and belonging in his art. He works as a visual arts professor and program director at Morehouse College.

Jessica Caldas is a multidisciplinary artist who works in painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, and sculpture. Central themes in her work are women’s relationships and experiences. Caldas delves into both positive and negative aspects of these subjects and covers a wide array of social topics, from social justice to abuse. She draws from her advocacy work with the YWCA Georgia Women’s Policy Institute and other nonprofit legal firms, lobbying for various bills to support the rights of sexual assault survivors. Caldas recently received her MFA in painting, drawing, and printmaking from Georgia State University.