Bethany Collins Gallery Talk

A gallery talk with exhibiting artist Bethany Collins.

Join us for an evening with exhibiting artist Bethany Collins as she discusses her current exhibition, The Deluge, while offering insight into the role of text and translation in her practice and how meaning unfolds through movement rather than certainty.

In The Deluge, Collins works through transcription, erasure, and reinterpretation to trace language as a force in motion—shaping, eroding, and returning across time. Drawing from sources such as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Sophocles’ Antigone, and the shifting cadences of a national hymn, her work reveals how meaning persists even as it slips beyond fixed control.

On Wednesday, July 1, at 7PM, the Holiday Theater presents To The Person Sitting in Darkness (2026), curated by Bethany Collins and named after Mark Twain’s scorching 1901 critique of American imperialism. To the Person Sitting in Darkness (2026) consists of multiple versions of The Battle Hymn of the Republic sung simultaneously. As the lights of the historic theater imperceptibly fade, Twain’s haunting version of the wartime anthem serves as the cantus firmus – the consistent and pernicious underpinning of the entire work, endlessly repeating and rolling back on itself. The performance ends as the theater submerges into total darkness. Free RSVP.

About the Artist

Bethany Collins (b. 1984) was born in Montgomery, AL, and lives and works in Chicago, IL. Collins is a multidisciplinary artist whose conceptual practice examines the relationship between race and language. Centering language — its biases, contradictions, and ability to simultaneously forge connections and foster violence — her works illuminate America’s past and offer insight into the development of racial and national identities. Drawing on a wide variety of documents, ranging from nineteenth-century musical scores to US Department of Justice reports, she erases, obscures, excerpts, and rewrites portions of text to bring to the fore issues revolving around race, power, and histories of violence.

Collins’ work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including At Sea, Seattle Art Museum, WA (2024); Accord, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, AL (2024); America: A Hymnal, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2023); and My Destiny Is In Your Hands, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, AL (2021), among others. Collins has participated in many group exhibitions, including Prospect.6: The Future is Present, The Harbinger is Home, New Orleans, LA (2024); The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA (2021), traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2021), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2022), and Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, CO (2022); and Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2020), traveled to Seattle Art Museum, WA (2021), and The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2021). Collins’s work is represented in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, among others. She is the recipient of many awards and grants, including the 3Arts Next Level Visual Arts Award (2024); Pardon Prize (2024); Gwendolyn Knight & Jacob Lawrence Prize (2023); Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2022); and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2015), among others. Bethany Collins is represented by Alexander Gray Associates, NY, and PATRON, Chicago, IL.