The Slit is pleased to present lore, a two-person exhibition featuring artworks by Amber Imrie and Arden Carlson.
Both artists, rooted in rural Arkansas, interrogate the multiplicity of queer identity through the lens of Southern landscapes and traditions. Their shared disposition as queer artists navigating the challenges and beauty of remote living shapes this exhibition, blending photography, textiles, video, and sculptural elements.
This exhibition challenges conventional narratives of nature as a "pure" refuge, presenting it instead as a site of entanglement where belief, identity, and practicality collide. Through a combination of Southern translation and speculative imagination, the works examine the friction and fluidity of queerness within a space often considered immutable.
Amber Imrie ( b. 1988) Imrie's work engages with the cultural sediment of the rural South, examining the erosion of identity, memory, and land over time. Using a blend of photography, fabric, text, sculpture, and video, they weave together personal and collective histories to investigate the complexities of belonging. The works in their exhibition reflect years of exploration into themes such as isolation, community, resilience, and the collision of queer identity with Southern life. Through this practice, Imrie reveals the quiet, often invisible dimensions of rural queerness and its complex relationships with history, environment, and domesticity. By incorporating poetry, imagery, and objects, they explore how queer lives and landscapes endure, resist, and evolve in the face of cultural and environmental erasure.
Amber's work has been collected by the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, Bates Museum, and many wonderful private collectors. They have a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from Stanford University. Imrie has been grateful to have received the following grants and awards, Anita Fowel Award in Photography(2018), Murphy Cadogan Award (2017), Artist 360 Award (2023), Creative Exchange Award (2023).
Arden Carlson (b. 1997) is a Kentucky born artist & farmhand. They earned a MFA degree in Sculpture from the University of Arkansas, finding a resulting home within the surrounding Ozark community. Arden’s artistic practice is characterized by a unique blend of traditional woodworking techniques and graphite drawings, allowing them to navigate the delicate spaces that exist in the collision of reality and imagination, ground and sky.
Notable recent participations include a residency with the Wassaic Artist Project and the Eureka Springs School of the Arts.