On view November 18, 2022, to March 26, 2023
Crosstown Arts Galleries
Free and open to the public
Gallery Hours
Tuesday–Friday: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Sunday: noon– 6 p.m.
“Those Who Hold Dominion Here” by Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo takes inspiration from serpents in Incan Mythology, and Southern snakes to create a liminal space at the center of the earth presided over by deities capable of transgressing the boundary between this subterranean spiritual realm and our current lived reality. After the violence of our present, portals on the walls reminiscent of black holes observe and allow entry and exit to the space. Observing through these windows our human actions on earth, these yonic, serpentine deities rise encrusted from the deepest earth, unknowable, and as guides responsible for the passage of knowledge. Bringing humanity to a negotiation of human time on earth, they facilitate the decision to exit the space through another portal, on to an unknown world to come, or the possibility of complete non-existence.
Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo is an interdisciplinary artist based in Memphis, Tennessee. She is a co-founder of BASEMENT, a provisional artist-run space in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she was also a co-curator from 2019-2022. Her work has been shown throughout the eastern United States and internationally including the Mint Museum, Ackland Art Museum, Duke University, and Field Projects among others. She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her BA in Studio Art and English Literature from Davidson College. She was a 10-month artist-in-residence at Crosstown Arts (2021) and is an upcoming artist-in-residence at the McColl Center (2023). She was a 2021 New Public Sculpture Fellow with the UrbanArts Commission in Memphis, and a 2021 recipient of TriStar Arts’ inaugural Current Art Fund project grant. She was awarded the 2022 Tennessee State Fellowship through the Southern Prize and State Fellowship Program, and was the finalist for the Southern Prize.
