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Sioux Falls, South Dakota — The Eide/Dalrymple Gallery at Augustana University opens “Jovan Speller: In Lottie’s Living Room” which will be on view from November 17 through December 15. A Gallery reception will be held on Friday, November 18, 7-9 p.m., with an artist talk at 7:30 p.m.

“In Lottie’s Living Room” is an installation created by Jovan C. Speller, a multidisciplinary artist, archivist, and “radical homesteader” based in rural Minnesota.

Speller explains, “During the course of my research into and visits to the land once owned by my paternal relatives in Windsor, North Carolina, I began a practice of intense chronicling, capturing photographs of significant sites and people, as well as the voices of those retelling my family’s histories. I collected artifacts and ephemera. I documented, photocopied, and otherwise recorded and consumed all things that could potentially tether me to my roots. Listening to the stories that I was told, and reading through records of the constant stream of transactions where our ancestral homeplace was sold and exchanged, due to one circumstance or another, I witnessed the residue of generations of impermanence and disruption.”

The installation is a built representation of the familial space of Speller’s Aunt Lottie, combined with photographs and the accumulation of personal artifacts. “In Lottie’s Living Room attempts to reconfigure the disassembled nature of these findings,” notes Speller. “for digging up the past can be messy, even when necessary. This work creates a space to honor and resettle the ashes disturbed in my unearthing of origin.”

Jovan Speller holds a B.F.A. in Fine Art Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Her visual works and installations have been published and exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions. Her work has been collected in private collections and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is a recipient of multiple grants and fellowships, including the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship. Speller was awarded the 2021 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize.

This exhibition is funded in part by Augustana University’s Mellon Fund Committee.

The Eide/Dalrymple Gallery is located on Commons Circle (30th Street and Grange Avenue), in the Center for Visual Arts at Augustana University. The Eide/Dalrymple Gallery is open and free to the public, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays, 1-4 p.m.

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