The 2025 Alabama Triennial, “Currents,” has arrived at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts with artworks that emphasize “movement, journey, mapping, exchange and transference,” complicating “notions of Southern identity as something static or unitary.” Press materials further call it “a confluence of various currents, constantly in motion, made and remade in relation to what came before.” In simpler terms, Alabama is difficult to characterize, and its triennial reflects that.
In some ways, the theme—conceived by Alabama Contemporary Art Center executive director elizabet elliott, activist and artist Sydney A. Foster and curator Hannah Spears—is an act of resistance. Alabama is widely viewed as racially and politically homogenous; presenting it as anything but is subversive. This is, I think, the most successful aspect of the exhibition—this contrarian act of refusal to be reduced, an obstinate stance in favor of polyvalence. But as inspiring as this sentiment is, it is also the exhibition’s greatest weakness, with the Triennial ultimately becoming an overhung cacophonic menagerie. “Hard to characterize” is often a double-edged sword.
This subversive refusal is most powerful in the artworks of Allison Grant. Take Paper Mill Stacks (2019). The photograph depicts a lush nature scene, with emerald foliage filling nearly the entirety of the composition, save for a small aperture through which a cloudy blue sky is visible. Set within this aperture, rising from the foregrounded wilderness, are two smokestacks, their tops belching out thick streams of smoke. What was previously a serene view of nature, evoking the thick, hot, verdant season of summer, has been poisoned with these icons of industry. Like a good walk spoiled by a dead, decaying deer, this artwork upsets the feeling of comfort it initially established—a striking parallel to an outsider’s perspective on Alabama. It is all too easy, the work says, to fall back on tropes and stereotypes. They are, of course, far easier to stomach than the messy reality of things, but reliance on them can become toxic. When nature (i.e., assumptions) becomes just another tool for capitalist production (i.e., simple summations), who are we to blame but ourselves when it goes up in smoke upon closer inspection?
Elsewhere, the Triennial’s commitment to nebulousness proves quizzically abstruse. Take Helga Mendoza’s painting installation—a string of seven mixed-media collages and one undergirding altar-like shelf. At the pinnacle of the array is El Mundo (The World) (2025), a dizzying mass of visual references, with Eve from Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Adam and Eve (1504) at center. Rendered with a resplendent tangerine wash, this collaged element radiates. Surrounding this central figure is a mishmash of flora and fauna, some identifiable—mushrooms, a goat and daisies, others generalized to the point of being unidentifiable. Above Eve, a portrait of a woman floats—perhaps the artist herself? As per the wall label, “[The artist’s] repeated use of Eve…represents a Classical or traditionally western depiction of femininity, which she combines with iconography from the chipchas musitas, the indigenous population of present-day Bogotá, Colombia, where her family is from.” While this work clearly comes from a considered point of view that grapples with the legacy of colonialism in the global South, I fail to see how its inclusion rounds out the portrait of Alabama. Neither of the main points of reference in the artwork relates to the state, nor is the artist herself Alabamian, though she is a current resident. It, and other works, could have been cut without impacting the Triennial, or at least differently contextualized to feel like part of the Current.
That said, it is always a struggle to paint a portrait of a place, with the infinite complexities of geography, demography, politics and climate, and this exhibition makes a valiant effort. Visiting the Triennial is worthwhile even if for nothing more than to buck well-seated assumptions about the arts in Alabama. With some changes, the exhibition could shine as a beacon for a diverse and substantive state. As it stands, I left the triennial with a sense that Alabama is a state to watch.
“Alabama Triennial 2025: Currents” continues at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts through August 16.
