Photographs, thread, and collage weave a visual memoir about growing up in the South in the 60s. Add|Mix|Fold opens on August 22, 2024, at PhotoSC in Columbia, South Carolina.

PhotoSC is proud to present Add|Mix|Fold, a mixed media exhibition by artist Nancy Richards Farese on view from August 23 through September 21, 2024. A reception with the artist will occur on Friday, August 23, at 918 Lady Street, Columbia, SC, from 6-8 pm, and a book signing with Farese will be held at All Good Books at 734 Harden St, Columbia, SC, on Saturday, August 24, at 2 pm. The exhibition debuted at Maine Media in Spring 2023 and will make its fifth stop in Columbia, SC, on its multi-city tour throughout the Southeast.

I still speak Southern in my head…

Add|Mix|Fold is inspired by a family pound cake recipe and a metaphor for how stories are mixed and folded into memory, and by bringing the past into the present, this work asks that art become essential in making and remaking sense of our lives. As a Southerner, the artist examines how we also ‘sift’ through the legacy that we inherit, paradoxical in beauty and violence, to decide what to hold onto and let go. Like these art objects, memory is constantly being assembled and collaged, a quilt of fact and fiction that we wrap ourselves in.

The exhibition features 30 hand-crafted photographs, which are tactile by design and push back on digital and synthetic imagery. Adding dimensionality with collage and thread suggests both assembly and exclusion. Stitching is, after all, our most ancient form of repair, associated with the practical but also the creative and the subversive.

Nancy Richards Farese is a California-based photographer who grew up in Carrollton, Georgia. She is a writer and social entrepreneur whose creative process is grounded in visual storytelling and social impact. Farese is an award-winning documentary photographer and has written extensively on the value of creativity and play in our work. She has collaborated with international development organizations, including the UN High Commission on Refugees, Refuge Point, and CARE USA, to create a visual survey of children’s play around the world. The book Potential Space: A Serious Look at Child’s Play was published in December 2021, and an exhibition of the series is traveling from 2023-2028. She is the founder and board chair of CatchLight.io, a visual first media organization that leverages the power of visual storytelling to inform, connect, and transform communities. She lectures on the social value of promoting a more playful world and the importance of supporting a robust visual media ecosystem in civil society.