Rosy Petri

media release: American Altars, an exhibition by Rosy Petri, will be on display in the first floor lobby project space and the second floor mezzanine from Tuesday, July 11 through Friday, September 1, 2023. A reception for American Altars and our other current exhibitions will be held on Saturday, July 22 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm.

Rosy Petri is a mother, self-taught artist, and storyteller from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her multidisciplinary works fuse fabric portraiture, multimedia storytelling, and illustration as an act of witness.

From her exhibition statement: "American Altars is my attempt at embodying a journey of cultural remembrance, ancestral grief, and the emotional reckoning required of Black people on the move in America of all generations from the post-insurrection perspective. The installation includes photographs grouped to explore the month-long journey driving 1,400 miles alone as a Black woman from Milwaukee to Clarksdale, Michigan (home of the legendary crossroads, the Delta blues, and land of my father’s people); New Orleans, Louiisiana (birthplace of jazz, historically free Creole people, and unique Black cultural experience); Birmingham, Alabama (a living witness of the American Civil Rights and Labor  movements); Atlanta, Georgia (a Black Mecca of culture), and Berea, Kentucky (the bluegrass state, home of the Kentucky Derby, and Appalachian stronghold where I was heading to become the inaugural artist in residence at the bell hooks center at Berea College)."

In 2021, Petri served as the inaugural Artist in Residence at the bell hooks center at Berea College. In 2020, she was selected as a Mary L Nohl Emerging Artist Fellow and a Mildred L. Harpole Artist of the Year from the city of Milwaukee Arts Board. In 2019, as the 11th Pfister Artist in Residence, Petri created a space to celebrate creative traditions of the African diaspora.