FLORAL MAPS
Selected works from Nuveen Barwari and Lauren Gregory Curated by Ashley Layendecker and Daniel Jones
February 2 - April 9
To make an appointment outside the reception or existing showtimes, contact Manager of Artistic Programming Daniel Jones at daniel@ozartsnashville.org.
One of the oldest forms of adornment, flowers date back to ancient Egyptian culture where they were used for personal beautification, gifts, and decorations. Frequently used throughout history during festivals and religious ceremonies, it seems fitting for this work to be placed near performance and celebrations. Lauren and Nuveen both utilize fabrics of flowers in their patterned adorned textiles, each highlighting their unique perspectives and origins.
Both artists featured here were born and raised in Tennessee and share a common theme of creating narratives from their specific experience rooted in place. Pop culture, religious iconography, and portrayals of community are all explored by the artists in their work. Through these textile collages, they create maps that guide us to a place that may feel like home — or welcome us to a new land.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Lauren Gregory (she/her/hers) is a painter, animator, educator and director who is best known for her technique of oil paint stop-motion animation, a way of making her paintings move. Born and raised in the mountains of East Tennessee, she began as an observational portrait painter, capturing friends and family in quick one session sittings. Lauren is the third in a lineage of southern female painters, following in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother. From these women she also learned quilting, a mode of expression that has resurfaced in recent years as a crucial part of Lauren’s aesthetic. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, and since then has created GIFs, looped video installations, and narrative animated shorts that have screened at MoMA P.S.1, the New Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, and at museums and film festivals around the world. She has directed and animated music videos for artists including Toro y Moi, Leonard Cohen, and Norah Jones and has been awarded artist residencies in Hungary, Italy, and in Newburgh, New York. Lauren teaches painting and animation at Parsons School of Design and she teaches quilting at Ox-bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency. She is represented in New York by the Elijah Wheat Showroom, and in Nashville by the Red Arrow Gallery. Lauren lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee.
Nuveen Barwari was born in Nashville, TN (1995). Barwari received a Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from Tennessee State University in 2019 and a Master’s in Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2022. Her expansive studio practice involves gathering and repurposing artifacts from her community such as worn Kurdish clothes, fabric, and used rugs to investigate the multiplicity of materials, their inherited history, and cultural meanings. Barwari’s work has been featured in national and international publications including the Nashville Scene, New American Painting, Yahoo Nachrichten Deutschland, Gazete Duvar, and Botan Times. She has exhibited in numerous locations such as, Sugar Gallery (2019) in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Zg Gallery (2020) in Chicago, NGBK Gallery in Berlin Germany (2021), Duhok Gallery (2021) in Duhok, Kurdistan, and Ortega y Gasset Projects, in Brooklyn, NY (2022). Barwari is represented by The Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville, TN and is currently working and living in Albany, NY.
