January 9 – February 22, 2025
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION
An Opus of Love is a creative arts-based exploration that intersects with fields, such as new materialism, object-oriented ontology, and visual art education. It draws upon theories like those of Tina Campt from Listening to Images (2017), which serves as a guide to understanding the sonic frequencies of archival photographic images. Herman uses personal archival materials to explore themes like fatherhood, Black visualities, Gullah Geechee culture, and perception to grasp the interstitial moments of one’s relational living experiences.
Central to the exhibition is his use of collage, which he employs not just as an artistic technique but as a profound tool for introspection and narrative construction. This method allows him to capture the nuanced ways in which the past remains perpetually present and to create non-linear, seemingly fragmented, and discontinuous narratives that allow past and future to coexist in meaningful dialogues. Herman describes this process as a dynamic approach that bridges temporality and identity, mirroring his philosophical and autobiographical journey of using archival images to grasp how time is experienced and embodied.
Herman’s artistic practice aims to deepen the discourse on creative arts-based research, highlighting how collage can facilitate ontological inquiries of relationality and grasp an understanding of how we construct, narrate, and live our identities.
DAVID HERMAN JR BIO
Dr. David Herman Jr. is a distinguished visual art education scholar and artist focusing on the intersections of perception, embodiment, and ontology as a politics. Their interest is centered around posthumanist new materialist theories and they employ phenomenological methods to explore critical social and educational interventions. Herman’s scholarly work has contributed to understanding the relational and political aspects of human and other-than-human interactions as pedagogical endeavors. Herman has authored and co-edited book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles discussing critical visual education, the politics of space and identity, and the implications of gestural visualities. Their recent works include contributions to book volumes such as Visual Pedagogies: Concepts, Cases, and Practices (2023) and The Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education (2018).
Herman has held several artist residencies, including at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, and Project Row Houses in Houston, where they exhibited work and developed educational programs and youth-oriented workshops. Herman’s photographic work has been featured in solo exhibitions, such as a 10-channel new media installation Not Without a Trace at the Dallas Museum of Art and Etched In The Eyes of A People Called Gullah Geechee. Their artwork has appeared in group exhibitions and received accolades, such as the Reuben Burrell Photography Award at Hampton University Museum. His photographs have also been published in journals like Callaloo and the Ohio University Research Journal, furthering his recognition in the artistic and academic fields. Herman is Assistant Professor of Art Education at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.
