With Care--No Longer is an exhibition that documents the loving act of remembering. Artist Alayna Pernell delves into the archive to recover the names and narratives of Black women whose stories have been lost in the shuffle of time. Using photography as a second language, Pernell photographs portraits of Black women from the archive, using her hands to intervene on the viewer’s perception of the subject.

Black women have existed as both hyper visible and invisible all at once. Looking to bring balance to such a dichotomous existence, Pernell uses her hands to both shield and reveal the women she uplifts. Thus reimaging a reality for Black women that is honest, authentic and multidimensional.

Many of the photographs presented in Pernell’s works are part of the Peter J. Cohen collection. As part of an archive owned by a white man, many of these photographs symbolize both a metaphorical and literal issue of narrative ownership. Pernell uses her titles to allude to this issue, and in each of her works, she makes an effort to uncover the stories of the women she depicts. Taking part of this recovery work is a loving act, rooted in a care for objects, stories and above all else, Black women.

Alayna N. Pernell was born in 1996 in rural Alabama. Pernell received her BA in Studio Art and African American Studies in 2019, and is currently an MFA Photography candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Pernell’s interdisciplinary practice considers the gravity of the mental wellbeing of Black people in relation to the physical and metaphorical spaces they inhabit. Visually, she creates space for healthy dialogue to occur. For her, difficult conversations are vital  for promoting understanding, love and empathy between people.


Ashleigh Smith was born in 1997 in St. Louis, Missouri. Ashleigh is an independent curator and the founder of The Curator’s Pick: a collective for young curators of color. Ashleigh received her BA in Art History and Museum Studies from Duke University in 2020 and will be attending the Williams College graduate program in Art History in the fall of 2021. Smith finds both beauty and complexity in figurative works and believes Black feminism can be a powerful framework for understanding subjectivity, and ways of being, in both fine art and visual culture.