Corapeake exhibit at Stone Center

Ragged suit coats, an artist’s personal journal and faint voices looping in the background tell an intimate story that photographs alone do not.

“Corapeake,” a multimedia exhibit by artist Kendall Messick, is currently on display at the Robert and Sallie Brown Gallery in the Sonja Haynes Stone Center.

Messick, based in New York City, chronicles the intimate stories of the aging residents of the town of Corapeake, N.C. in an exhibition focused on preserving the memories of those often forgotten.

“‘Corapeake re-centers the rural experience as the foundation for the African-American experience,” said Joseph Jordan, director of the Stone Center.

“The exhibit draws attention to the generational divide that often defines Corapeake and communities like it as relics of the past.”

The Stone Center’s art committee chose to feature the town of Corapeake — a largely African-American community in eastern North Carolina — as part of this year’s focus on exploring identity and racial politics, Jordan said.

Photographs from Messick’s seven-year multimedia project are in the Smithsonian museum’s permanent collection, and the accompanying documentary has been shown on PBS affiliates throughout the country, including UNC-TV.

“Corapeake” was Messick’s first significant work. The artist has since gone on to create other long-term multimedia projects and many photographs, one of which is a part of the collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Messick’s vision for his project came when he visited the hometown of his best friend from Wake Forest University, Brenda Parker Hunt.

“I immediately responded strongly to the place,” Messick said. “It was magical.”

From that first visit in 1995 until the project’s completion in 2002, Messick and Hunt repeatedly traveled back and forth from Messick’s home in northern New Jersey to this small village on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp.

“I allowed the project to evolve in an organic way,” Messick said. “I just let the simplicity of the lifestyles and the resonance of the stories inspire me.”

The photographs are mounted on old wallpaper made out of newsprint which Corapeake residents used in their homes.

Messick said that the Robert and Sallie Brown Gallery has a small, intimate atmosphere, which he feels is vital to the viewer’s experience of the exhibition.

The collection, which opened in late September, will be on display until Dec. 3.

Gordon Ryan, public communications officer at the Stone Center, said that Messick has an unmistakable compassion for his subjects.

“You look at the photos and you know the people,” Ryan said. “You can’t help but come away from the exhibit feeling as though you discovered something about yourself among the newspaper walls and weathered smiles of Corapeake.”

Contact the Arts Desk at artsdesk@unc.edu.