Kevin Jerome Everson
is an artist and maker of numerous short films and features about the working class culture of Black Americans and other people of African descent. His films look for the art in everyday life, revealing people's relationship to their crafts and focusing on the conditions, tasks, gestures, and materials in communities. Much of Everson's recent work is inspired by found footage. He manipulates news and sports footage, old films, still photographs, and image files in various ways, subtly repositioning or restaging actions and movements to highlight or shift the original emphasis.
The title of this exhibit of photographs, Empire, refers to a steel plant in the artist’s hometown of Mansfield, Ohio. The images are of id photos of Black American steel workers at the Empire Still from the 1940s
Kevin Jerome Everson’s films have been included in numerous screenings and film festivals internationally including the Pompidou Centre, Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and last years Whitney Biennial. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the American Academy in Rome and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships.
In 2006, Everson was voted by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the 25 most important new faces in independent cinema. Everson will be screening his new films at the upcoming Rotterdam Film Festival where his films have been presented regularly for several years. Mr. Everson is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA.
Kevin Jerome Everson's exhibition of photographs, EMPIRE, will be on view concurrent to the artist's participation in the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2010