WHAT A FEELING! | ACT I: Christian Noelle Charles

Artist Christian Noelle Charles presents WHAT A FEELING! | ACT I at Edinburgh Printmakers. This unique presentation of screenprints is the first part of an exploration project discussing the topics of racial identity, inequality, care and love through the Black Feminine Lens.

Working across three different mediums: moving from printmaking to video, from video to performance, Charles explores the rhythms, movement, and the body language of women of colour.

WHAT A FEELING! | ACT I is part of the 2023 Edinburgh Art Festival (11-27) August. The exhibition will run from 28 July-17 September.

SPECIAL EVENTS

• Exhibitions Preview - Thursday 27th July, 18:30-20:30
• Monoprinting Workshop with Christian Noelle Charles - Saturday 12th August, 14:00
• Artist Talk - Christian Noelle Charles - Wednesday 23rd August, 17:30 
• PRESS: An American-Style Block Party - Friday 25th August (tickets to be released soon, licence permitting)

For this solo exhibition, Christian Noelle Charles has composed a new body of work: a series of portraits that portray the Act of getting ready, highlighting a cohort of Black Women creatives in the Scottish Art Scene and exemplifying self-care. The portraits are explored and conveyed as gestures of being judged, analysed, and satisfied within a format of a salon, which embodies the idea of being cared for and treated. Developing these gestural portraits allows the viewer to witness how these gestures trigger the tension within the space, an encounter, and a conversation on the concept of support and care. The two-part project will examine how we judge as a result of people’s body language.

For ACT I of WHAT A FEELING! Charles is trying to understand the act of getting ready and preparing ourselves for what’s to come. A salon, which Charles considers a space of escape, support, and is driven from one-to-one conversations with Black Creatives as jumping off points; WHAT A FEELING! explores the experience of how they have been judged within arts institutions and interrogate the concept of working twice as hard to get half as far.

You can read the full transcripts of the conversations reflected on in the exhibition via the link below.

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