The Duke Gallery is excited to open the 2022-2023 academic year with Nekisha Durrett's (http://www.nekishadurrett.com/) immersive exhibition, True Grit. Rooted in Durrett's experiences as a Washington D.C. native, True Grit honors the process of place-making in opposition to the colonial forces of dispossession and extraction. Monumental text panels, encrusted with the soil of the Brookland neighborhood in which she grew up, spell out "Watch Me Bless This House" across the gallery wall.

Inverting the association of true grit with the macho swagger and "frontier justice" associated with the Western film of the same title, Durrett instead venerates the strength of family matriarchs who heal, bless, and build lives. True Grit invokes the red clay of the U.S. South as a backdrop to African American experience in the US South. Creating monuments to the power of memory, Durrett engages in storytelling and a poetic study of language.

An award-winning artist, Durrett has exhibited her work extensively both nationally and internationally. She earned her BFA at The Cooper Union in New York City and MFA from The University of Michigan School of Art and Design as a Horace H. Rackham Fellow. Durrett was honored as a finalist in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and is featured in The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today exhibition.

Her recent installations include: Up ‘til Now, a freestanding, solar powered sculpture that evokes the history of Washington, DC’s landscape and architecture, in Washington’s Golden Triangle neighborhood; “Messages for the City” in collaboration with For Freedoms in Times Square, New York; and a wall mounted public sculpture in the Liberty City community of Miami, Florida made in collaboration with conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas; and a permanent installation on the glass-walled vestibule in the newly renovated Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in Washington. Magnolia, a series of leaves perforated with the names of women murdered by law enforcement, was on view at Cody Gallery at Marymount University and the Atlanta Biennial at Atlanta Contemporary.

Upcoming Events
Wednesday, September 7, 5:00p: Artist talk by Nekisha Durrett
Wednesday, September 7, 6-7:30p: Opening Reception of True Grit