'Sovereign' is an arresting 'body' of work at McColl Center
'Sovereign: Honoring Bodily Autonomy' runs at the McColl Center, 721 N. Tryon St., through April 12.
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on March 17, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.
Review: McColl Center’s ‘Sovereign’ exhibit explores bodily autonomy with power and wit
Parker Duncan’s portrait of a girl writing “I am going to be somebody” in her composition book seems straightforward until you learn the title: “Dear Future Single Mother.” Duncan is a portrait artist based in Charlotte. (Photo courtesy of the McColl Center)
by Lawrence Toppman
As an adjective, “sovereign” can mean asserting independence. As a noun, it means someone who intends to exert complete control. Those definitions repeatedly clash at the new McColl Center exhibit “Sovereign: Honoring Bodily Autonomy.”
Curator Meredith Connelly, best known locally for creating the immersive attraction LIGHTS at the U.S. National Whitewater Center in 2019, has assembled work by more than 50 artists who reflect on issues from gender identity to reproductive rights. You expect an exhibit like this to be a gut-clencher, full of rage and bitterness. Occasionally, it is: I saw razor blades used at least four times. It also has moments of joy, humor, even serenity.
I don’t normally suggest visitors begin in the restroom, but I wouldn’t want you to miss Morgan Osburn’s “Stare,” a comment on the ubiquity of prying gazes. Dozens of pipe-cleaner “eyes” affixed with push-pin pupils surround the door downstairs and observe you on the commode, near a sign that reads “Once you have been ‘stared at’ in the bathroom, please return to the main gallery and continue your ‘Sovereign’ experience.”
On the way upstairs, you’ll pass the bluntest piece in the show: Liz Haywood’s “Still Not Asking for It,” a painting where women tote placards with slogans such as “If I make my uterus a corporation, will you stop regulating it?” Luckily, most everything upstairs is subtler.
Many of these artists want you to work but reward your labor. Renee Canetta’s beautifully unsettling “1 in 6,” staring eyes surrounding what might be a grave marker with spikes coming out of it, expects you to know that the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimates one woman in six has been sexually abused. You literally have to step into Andi Steele’s “Held,” a steel frame in which you stand, unable to move arms or legs, and feel its punitive embrace.
Many leave interpretations to you. Davita Galloway’s “Shades of Purp” — presumably “purple,” but maybe a play on a “perp” committing a crime — is a fabric structure decorated with feminine objects. Are the golden links at the top necklaces or lovely shackles? Natalie Jones’ “Seeds of Sovereignty” offers dried plants as obvious symbols of blooming or harvest, until you notice they’re in the shape of a penis and two large testicles. (They also reminded me, after I stopped smiling, of the outline of one of Georgia O’Keefe’s cow skulls.)
The angriest pieces take up the largest spaces. Mel Hamilton’s “Politics and the Pulpit” inverts a huge brown cross wrapped in chains and barbed wire above right-wing publications and books about Christian purity. Is he suggesting a Satanic influence — the cross is held upside down in a black mass — or being ironic about a traditional sign of Christian humility, an upside-down cross? Is he tweaking MAGAtes who inverted the U.S. flag as a “distress symbol” in wayward America?
Doris Kapner’s “Bridal Reliquary” — a reliquary displays objects linked to saints or religious figures — contains a bride’s severed finger, a replica of a woman’s naked torso festooned with white ribbons, pages bearing quotes from Madeleine Albright and Audre Lorde about refusal to be silent, and a handkerchief with “1 Cor: 7-4” on it. That refers to the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which famously says “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband.” (To be fair, it immediately adds “likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.” Sex should be mutually consensual.)
I gravitated more toward wit and joy. I found the former in Bethany Salisbury’s “Soft Things,” a circle of duck feathers, thread, lavender, rosemary — and, snuggled into a corner, one of those sneaky razor blades. I winced and laughed at Sharon Shapiro’s “Making Amends,” where a sweaty woman in a pink dress and high heels grips a chainsaw near a phallic grove of trees.
I found the latter in Jamea Najé Marlowe’s “Like a Hummingbird,” as a radiant and enormously pregnant woman hovered between massive flowers with an iridescent hummingbird — for indigenous cultures, sometimes a symbol of a warrior reborn — perched on her shoulder.
Most of these artists have plenty of experience. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one who hasn’t: Kennedy Barrett, a Hough High School junior. Her bald, nude ceramic figure, face twisted in a sad grimace and body extruding thermoplastic spikes, extends both hands in supplication in the ironically titled “Subtle Cries for Help.”
Barrett’s right to be anxious: Last week, a New York Times article reported that the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has cut its regional offices from 10 to four and may lose half its collective staff. You don’t need to be an adult to worry about America’s mental health.
If You’re Going: “Sovereign: Honoring Bodily Autonomy” runs at the McColl Center, 721 N. Tryon St., through April 12. The gallery is open Friday from noon to 6 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday through Thursday by appointment.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Toppman on the Arts newsletter.
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