Akimbo

The Museum of Fine Arts is proud to present Akimbo, the first solo exhibition by Florida State University alumna, Zoë Charlton, in her hometown, Tallahassee. Bringing together personal history and collective memory, the exhibition reflects on the ways in which identity is shaped through place. In Akimbo, Charlton reveals how memories and experiences accumulate across time, layering themselves within the Tallahassee landscape.

At the heart of the exhibition is Paul Russell Road, a reimagined and meticulously crafted half-scale model of Charlton’s family home in Tallahassee. This upended house functions as a record of memory, an architectural tool that follows a blueprint informed by lived experience and historical recollection within this Southern landscape. In dialogue with the sculpture is Smokey Hallow, an animated film that evokes the vibrancy and loss of one of Tallahassee’s historic Black American neighborhoods during mid-20th-century urban renewal. Through evocative motion referencing the construction of homes, accompanied by natural and industrial sounds, Charlton develops a parallel record across different media. Together, these works operate as material and immaterial archives, mapping the intertwined histories of people, the built environment, and the landscapes that hold them.